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R I V E R B L U F F C AV E N E A R S P R I N G F I E L D P R O V I D E S T I M E L I N E I N F O S S I L S |
EVERYONE WILL REMEMBER the day Riverbluff Cave near Springfield was discovered. It was discovered on September 11, 2001, when we were all glued to television sets to learn what was happening to our country. One of the little-known consequences of the bombing-by-plane of the World Trade Towers is that an instant ban on any dynamite explosions was immediately sent around the country to the construction industry. A road crew in Springfield received the alert and immediately delayed planting any more charges. That morning, they had begun planting a planned dozen dynamite charges in a rock outcrop where they were lengthening a rural road. But they had a problem. They had already planted two charges. Leaving them in the ground would be dangerous, but they could not be safely retrieved, either. So the road crew sought a special exception to explode the two charges already planted. If all twelve charges had been exploded, the cave would have been lost. As it was, the two charges blew a hole forty feet wide and twenty feet high but did not destroy the cave. The highway department called Matt Forir, the Springfield-Greene County Parks naturalist, to investigate. “I knew almost immediately it was a big one,” he says. Two hundred feet from the entrance, he saw claw marks from the extinct giant short-faced bear. “I told them, we need to save this cave.” “But it’s difficult to delight in the day of discovery,” says Matt, now the lead paleontologist of the Riverbluff Cave and executive director of the
Above: Riverbluff Cave was a bustling place in its prime; this claw mark of a saber-tooth cat or an American lion was found on the walls along with marks from the claws of a short-faced bear. Right: The otherworldly landscape of the cave remains unaltered except for a few lights, walkways, and the bench. The people at the top right corner give a sense of scale of the cave.
associated Missouri Institute of Natural Science, which houses specimens from the cave. Following the cave’s discovery, workers had just five days to seal the entrance before the outside environment would have begun altering the humidity level of the cave. Even the slightest
If All Twelve Charges Had Been Exploded, The Cave Would Have Been Lost.
By Danita Allen Wood
alteration in humidity could forever change what had been sealed for at least fifty-five thousand years, according to several dating techniques. So they sealed the cave, and no one went in for another six months to allow time for the cave to heal from the exposure it had already experienced. The two-thousand-foot long cave and its two side passages are remarkable for two more reasons. First, the fact that the cave has been sealed for at least fifty-five thousand years, maybe even longer, preserved the cave environment in the exact state as the day a rock slide or other tumultuous event closed its entrances. This gives researchers an unprecedented opportunity to study a prehistoric cave. Just one minute example: researchers can sample the preserved clay for pollen, which doesn’t survive well in open caves, to learn more about the plant life of the time. Claw marks on a cave wall made by an American lion look like they were made recently. Hair stuck in clay looks like it could have been deposited by a bear scratching its belly against the cave wall yesterday. Humidity stays at almost 100 percent in the cave, meaning nothing has dried out, including some bear dung that remains in the cave. Research on the dung has already shown the short-faced bear was eating small rodents, indicating its winter diet. Second, the cave has also gained national notoriety because it could potentially change what is known about the migration of the mammoth in North America. A set of mammoth bones discovered in the cave could rewrite previous
COURTESY OF RIVERBLUFF CAVE
THE OLDEST ICE AGE CAVE
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