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Do you know of any cave systems within Mesozoic vertebrate-bearing limestones?
Paleoworld-101 posted a topic in Questions & Answers
A bit of a random question, but i was watching a couple videos about some of the biggest cave systems on earth, and it got me thinking that almost all of the major cave systems i know about are formed by running water slowly etching away passages within Palaeozoic (or older) marine limestones. The walls of these caves usually contain a range of marine invertebrate fossils such as corals, crinoids, stromatoporoids etc. However, there are seemingly much fewer natural cave systems that run through younger limestones (Mesozoic or Cenozoic) containing vertebrate fossils within their walls. What are some examples that people here are familiar with? I'm not talking about instances where the cave system formed first, and then vertebrates later entered the caves and became trapped, causing their bones to accumulate within the caverns (e.g., like at Naracoorte Caves and on the Nullarbor Plain in Australia). I'm specifically talking about instances where limestone deposits containing vertebrate fossils were already laid down, and then afterwards, a natural cave system was subsequently formed through the bone-bearing limestones. I'm also not talking about artificial 'caves' or tunnels formed by human mining or digging operations. I did some googling and found both the Malaval Cave and Castelbouc Cave systems in France, which contain Earliest Jurassic and Middle Jurassic dinosaur footprints, respectively: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/ijs/vol47/iss1/3/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2019.1728286?journalCode=ujvp20 There is also Riversleigh in Queensland, Australia, which has some caves carved out of Miocene limestones containing the fossils of marsupials, bats, birds and reptiles. What others are there? Do any natural caves contain dinosaur or marine reptile bones within their walls?- 1 reply
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