| Abstract: |
The oxygen isotope composition of apatitic phosphate in the teeth and bones of certain animals reflects the oxygen isotope composition of the water they ingest. The isotopic composition of meteoric water is, in turn, well-correlated with mean annual temperature so that there is potential for recovering paleotemperatures of the regions where the animals lived. Cave bear teeth have been examined for this purpose. Analyses were made of enamel from 53 canine teeth of cave bears (males, females, adults, and juveniles) from 4 sites in Spain. Phosphate was isolated as Ag3PO4 and reacted with graphite to produce CO2 for isotopic analysis. Reproducibility of the analyses was normally 0.10.2. The oxygen isotope compositions of teeth from both the coastal site of Cueva de Santa Isabel (350-200 ka) and the inland site of Cueva Mayor (350 ka) were uniform (< 1.4 total variation per site) with mean d18O values of 18.9 and 17.2, respectively. Interpretations of these data include differences in global temperature between glacial and interglacial periods, and differences due to geographic locations of the sites (e.g., elevation and distance from the sea). The teeth from Cueva del Reguerillo (90-60 ka) in central Spain were more variable in isotopic composition, with an average value between those of teeth from the other caves.
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