Dear members and friends,
Our talk this time is organised in collaboration with FoSM and we are pleased to have Dr LIM Tze Tshen to share this interesting topic with us.
Topic: Relictual Great Apes of Sundaland – Fossil and Prehistoric Orangutans
Speaker: Dr. LIM Tze Tshen
Date: Thursday 29 August 2019
Time: 7.30-9.30 PM ( Please be on time)
Venue : Islamic Information Centre (Lower Baruk)
Jalan Ong Tiang Swee (behind Swinburne University)
Entrance: Free of charge but donations are always welcome.
Short Abstract:
Orangutan fossils are not uncommonly found among prehistoric faunas across Southeast Asia and southern China. Fossil finds are mostly limited to isolated teeth, jaw and bone fragments from both palaeontological and archaeological sites.
Our current knowledge of the fossil record indicates that this Asian great ape had a broadly continuous distribution across the region, ranging in time from Early Pleistocene to Holocene (2.5 million years ago to present). The modern-day distribution, confines to certain parts of pockets of rainforest in northern Sumatra and Borneo, represents only a small portion of their former geographic range, which includes the Indochinese and Sundaic biogeographic provinces.
This talk will give an overview of what we have learned from the fossil record about the natural history (biogeography, taxonomic diversity, dental size variation over time among different geographic populations, and possible evidence of island dwarfism) of prehistoric orangutans. Evidence for selective hunting by prehistoric humans in Borneo, gathered through the extensive study of the rich zooarchaeological remains from Niah, and its implication for the local demise of the great ape will also be discussed.
Short Biography:
LIM Tze Tshen, University of Cambridge graduate (2018), is a research fellow of the Sarawak Museum Campus Project. By profession, he is a vertebrate palaeontologist and a zooarchaeologist. Lim has carried out systematic research on historical and more recently discovered orangutan fossils kept in museums worldwide.
In collaboration with colleagues from the University of Malaya and Palaeontology Society of Malaysia, he is also actively involved in the search for and study of fossil orangutans recovered from palaeontological sites in Peninsular Malaysia. His current research topics in Sarawak Museum focus on the systematic cataloguing of the rich and diverse zooarchaeological collections stored in the museum, and detailed investigation of the large mammal remains from Niah Caves archaeological sites, particularly, primates and other locally extinct mammal species.
As a biologist, he is keen to explore practical ways through which palaeontological and zooarchaeological findings can turn into effective conservation measures to alleviate the current loss of tropical biodiversity. He also maintains a strong interest in the professional preservation and scientific curation of natural history collections in Malaysia. He is a strong advocate for a dynamic and research-and-education oriented national natural history museum in Malaysia and the relevance of a well-maintained and sufficiently curated natural history museum to the well-being of modern-day society.
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