Kingston Saltpeter Cave

[MarkGelbart]

This is from my chapter on Pleistocene fossil sites. I chose this one because it's a valuable site but little known.

It's immediately following my discussion of the Ladds Quarry fossil site, hence the references to it.

Bartow County, Georgia Fossils

Kingston Saltpeter Cave

Dr. Lewis Lipps, encouraged by her success excavating Pleistocene fossils at Ladds Quarry in 1967, sent some of her students to nearby Kingston Saltpeter Cave to prospect for fossils, but they found nothing. However, over the years cavers did find a few bones now and then. In 1980 Larry O. Blair and Joel Sneed explored the cave and found a deer bone along with three specimens they couldn't identify (3). The cavers sent the fossil bones they couldn't identify to Ronald Wilson of the University of Louisville. He determined the bone specimens were from a toad, a long-nosed peccary, and a jaguar. Convinced they'd discovered an important Pleistocene fossil site, Mr. Blair, Mr. Sneed, and Jim Henry founded the Kingston Saltpeter Cave Project and began excavating the site.

Most of the fossils were found under big pieces of flow stone that had collapsed over them. Like most Appalachian cave sites, water with dissolved limestone seeped in and around the bones, neutralizing the acidity in the soil, thus preserving them, while the rock covering them prevented scavengers from destroying the rest of the evidence. The excavators referred to this layer of flow stone as the "door to the Pleistocene."

Though they were amateurs, Mr. Blair, Mr. Henry, and Mr. Sneed did a remarkable job, surprising the university professor with their detailed work. Oftentimes, the cavers produced matching numbers of right and left jaw bones of bats, tiny structures difficult to find in the debris they sifted through. After a year all of the material was separated and catalogued into mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, fish, and invertebrates; and sent to experts in each field.

The radiocarbon dates of approximately 12,500 years (14,500 calender years) from the deer and peccary bones is about 2,000 years older than the specimens from Ladds. Unlike at Ladds, there are few species with affinities for warm weather, suggesting that a cool ice age climate still prevailed just two millennia earlier. One of the few species found here considered to have southern affinities is the jaguar, but this is a misleading belief. Jaguars originally evolved in Europe and Asia and crossed the Bering landbridge to get to North America. During the Pleistocene, jaguars lived as far north as Pennsylvania and Oregon, and their range is more closely correlated with their favorite prey species, the peccary, than with climate. Beautiful Armadilloes (Dasypus bellus) are also considered to have a preference for warmer climate, but like their modern day relatives, they could burrow underground during cold weather.

Animals that prefer colder weather than that of Bartow County's present climate occurred here. Northern flying squirrels glided between trees, hairy-tailed moles burrowed under the forest floor, and heather voles scampered in the grass. Heather voles now occur no farther south than the Canadian side of the Great Lakes. An open mixed forest of spruce, pine, oaks, and other hardwoods predominated here as evidenced by the numerous kinds of tree squirrels--northern and southern flying squirrels, gray and red squirrels, and chipmunks. Red squirrels no longer occur this far south and prefer a boreal forests as their primary habitat, but southern flying squirrels like old growth oak forests. The kinds of small animals present is consistent with pollen records showing north Georgia was primarily forested during this time though substantial meadows and even small prairies must have also existed in a mosaic pattern. The presence of white-tail deer and long-nosed peccary, forest-edge species, is more evidence of a forested environment.

As at Ladds, black bear specimens are common, but the most common specimens are bat bones which were recovered in the thousands. The most prevalent kinds of bats roosting here were of the Myotis family. Both bats and bears inhabit caves, so their presence is not unexpected, however, discovery of an elk bone and prairie chicken remains is somewhat of a surprise. Kingston Saltpeter Cave is the southern-most record of elk. Trees must have grown far enough apart for grass to grow in the surrounding environment because elk are grazers. A horse leg bone is evidence of another grazer, and the prairie chicken, now almost extinct, inhabits open areas. One species of prairie chicken did live in Massachusetts during Colonial times but was quickly hunted to extinction because reportedly, they tasted good and were easy to hunt.

Mastodons frequented the cave, perhaps utilizing the deposit of saltpeter as a mineral lick. They travelled many miles to exploit this resource and probably migrated up and down the nearby Etowah River and its tributary creeks, including Ashpole Creek which is less than a mile from the cave. The mastodon material that survived the ravages of time was meager--only a few tooth fragments rested in the fossil bearing strata. Scavengers must have made quick work of the carcass and perhaps the tooth washed into the cave.

One specimen found in the cave poses an intriguing mystery. Ronald Wilson, while initially cataloguing all the specimens from the cave, indentified it as a human tooth, and because it was found with mammal fossils dating to pre-Clovis, its age would be of considerable archaeological importance. Other anthropologists, some paleontologists, and a dentist also believed the tooth to be human. However, most anthropologists have examined the tooth and determined it's from some unknown or indetermined species of ungulate, and Russ Graham of the Denver Museum, believed it looked like it belonged to a long-nosed peccary. In any case it's a weird-looking tooth and what species it represents is still unsettled.

We can thank owls for the abundance of small mammal fossils--cottontails, mice, rats, voles, and lemmings. Owls nest and roost in caves and drop remains of their meals. The most abundant bird specimens in the cave were those of ruffed grouse--a favored prey of the great horned owl. The bones of nine species of ducks, some of which may have been year round residents during the ice age, were the result of predatory bird behavior as well. Passenger pigeons, turkeys, and many song birds fell victim to owls that sought refuge here. Three owl species unwittingly left their own bodies as evidence, including one unknown and unnamed extinct species. Dr. Steadman, the scientist who examined the owl bones, wouldn't speculate about the ecological implications from these meager specimens of an unknown extinct species, but I will. The fossil remains compare favorably to owls from the Strigidae family which includes such species as the northern spotted owl and the great gray owl, two kinds that favor a habitat with coniferous trees for nesting and open meadows for hunting, environments especially common in the northwest. I think this indicates north Georgia had a great deal of open spruce forest and as mentioned this is consistent with the pollen record.

Most of the bird species recovered from the cave are woodland species, but the prairie chicken, the magpie, and the upland sandpiper are notable exceptions--they prefer open habitat. The fossil avifauna shows a remarkable similarity to that from caves in northern Alabama. A definite northern and western element existed in Georgia and Alabama during the ice age. Below is a table comparing the species of birds found in Bell Cave in northern Alabama with those of Kingston Saltpeter Cave. These were likely the most common species found in the late Pleistocene southern Appalachians though there is a bias toward specimens that would be more likely to end up in a cave. Many of them are the kinds of birds that would be victims of birds of prey. Others, such as the eastern phoebe, like to nest near the entrance of caves. Nevertheless, this table should give us a flavor of what kinds of birds we would see, if we could travel back to this time period. With the exception of the two extinct species and six species that no longer range in the region, all of these species still live in the area. This fossil evidence is only a fraction of the number of species that lived in Pleistocene north Georgia because many species perchance never ended up in the cave.

(I'm omitting the table because I don't know how to construct a table on the message board. I can list the species later on this thread, if anyone wants to see it.)

Fourty-three species of reptile and amphibian fossils were found in the cave, but unlike some found at Ladds, they all still occur in the region.

How did fish bones get in the cave deposit? The nearby river and creeks are too far away and not prone to flooding. Moreover, the cave is elevated high on the mountain. Once again, we can thank predatory birds and their sloppy eating habits. No extinct species of fish occur in the fossil deposit; sucker fish and catfish were the most plentiful specimens and are still common in the Etowah River. On a visit to the nearby Etowah Indian Mounds, I examined the fish trap engineered by the Indians hundreds of years ago. They placed rocks in a v-shaped formation angled against the current in a way that the current forces the fish into the point of the v. Now, the fish just pass through this point, but when in use, the Indians placed baskets at the end, thus capturing fish. I saw a number of large silver-colored sucker fish that could have been caught the day I was there, if a wicker basket had been placed on the point of the v.

Kingston Saltpeter Cave is not open to the public, though guided tours are sometimes arranged. Only a small part of the cave has been excavated and test digs in other parts of the cave have proven to be fossiliferous as well. Even human remains have been recovered. The founders of the Kingston Saltpeter Cave had the forsight to understand these areas should be left for future scientists with more advanced technology who will be able to glean more information from this material than is presently possible.

Sources from my endnotes.

(3) Sneed, Joel M.; and Larry O. Blair

The Late Record of Kingston Saltpeter Cave, Bartow County, Georgia

Kingston Saltpeter Cave Study Project 2005

Sneed, Joel M.

"An Enigmatic Tooth from a Pleistocene Deposit in Georgia--Is it Human?

The 2004 Bulletin of the Georgia Speleological Survey

Blair, Larry O.

"Recovering the Fossil Material from Kingston Saltpeter Cave."

Georgia Underground 41 (2) June 2006

The paleobiology database

www.paleodb.org

[mommabetts]

Thanks for sharing, good read.