Artibeus jamaicensis Leach, 1821

Orihuela, Johanset, Orozco, Leonel Pérez, Álvarez Licourt, Jorge L., Viera Muñoz, Ricardo A. & Barani, Candido Santana, 2020, Late Holocene land vertebrate fauna from Cueva de los Nesofontes, Western Cuba: Stratigraphy, chronology, diversity, and paleoecology, Palaeontologia Electronica (a 57) 23 (3), pp. 1-46 : 22

Artibeus jamaicensis Leach, 1821

Material. The Jamaican fruit bat was represented by 173 skulls, 254 mandibles, and 45 humeri. Radii and other parts of the appendicular skeleton were not fully counted, but more than 22 specimens, including scapulae and femora, represented this species. NISP of 495 and an MNI of at least 165 individuals ( Table 3).

Description. After Nesophontes micrus and N. major , this taxon was the third most common taxon of the assemblage. Remains of this species displayed multiple taphonomic marks of deposition, mineralization, decomposition, predation, and digestion.

Taxonomic remarks. Most of these specimens are indistinguishable morphologically and metrically from the Cuban endemic subspecies A. jamaicensis parvipes . However, eight crania, eight hemimandibles, and four humeri (NISP of 21), indicated in Table 3 as A. jamaicensis , were larger than the maxima of the fossil and neontological range provided by Silva Taboada (1974, 1979) and Balseiro et al. (2009). These specimens slightly exceeded the upper range of A. jamaicensis parvipes in palatal length (> 13.5 mm), anteorbital width (> 8.5 mm), and postorbital breath (> 7.2 mm) ( Silva Taboada, 1979). In this last measurement, it also exceeded values reported for A. anthonyi (> 7.4 mm; Woloszyn and Silva Taboada, 1977; Balseiro et al., 2009) and Artibeus lituratus (> 6.7 mm in Woloszyn and Silva Taboada, 1977). This variation may be a form of temporal or chronoclinal variation but will be further explored elsewhere. Since these specimens are qualitatively inseparable from A. jamaicensis , they are included within this taxon. These specimens occurred exclusively in layers H and I (levels III and IV) where they were directly associated with A. jamaicensis , A. anthonyi , and Phyllops vetus .