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While exploring a cave in Texas back in 2023, a paleontologist entered an area that must have felt like a dream. The area was filled with fossilized bones from animals that have never been found in Central Texas before.
These bones were not enclosed in rock or dirt, but were just sitting out and ready to be found, making the initial task of the paleontologist very easy.
Some of the fossils belonged to a giant tortoise, others to an extinct animal known as a pampathere, which was the size of a lion but is a relative of modern armadillos. There were also fossilized claws of giant sloths, bones from camels, remains of mastodons, and even saber-toothed-tigers. In a statement about the find, Dr. John Moretti, who works at the University of Texas’s Jackson School of Geosciences, said:
“There were fossils everywhere, just everywhere, in a way that I haven’t seen in any other cave. It was just bones all over the floor.”
The reason these fossils were just out on the floor is not entirely known, but it is very likely that they were likely flushed into the area around 100,000 years ago during a warm period after the last ice age. Water is often transported underground via these caves in this part of Texas, so the increase in water flow likely eroded material that was encasing the fossils and then moved them down into the room of the cave where they were found.
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There has been a lot of research in the Central Texas region over the past several years with many important finds, but none are as extensive as this. Moretti explained:
“This site is showing us something different, and that’s really important because of all the work that’s been done in this region. If it is interglacial in age, it’s a new window into the past and into a landscape, environment, and animal community that we haven’t observed in this part of Texas before.”
The bones that were found appeared to be polished and rounded, which further supports the idea that they were freed from the flowing water before being deposited into their current location. The bones also had a rusty red coloring thanks tot he minerals found in the area.
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Having these bones out in the open made them very easy to locate and recover, but the lack of surrounding material makes radiometric dating impossible, so researchers can’t be as certain as to the exact age of the fossils at this point.
Additional research on the fossils from Bender’s Cave are ongoing, though initial findings were published in Quaternary Research.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious “pyramids” discovered in Antarctica. What are they?