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National Park Service will start the excavations of the cave in the Black Hills of the South Dakota which has been left untouched for the past 11000 years, which could offer valuable insight for researchers about the region’s climate history.
The cave was discovered in 2004 but it was guarded secret to prevent marauding cave hunters and explorers from disturbing the site before it is studied.
The National park Service will begin the study by excavating the mouth of a South Dakota cave.
The NPS team is excited about the wealth of things they are going to unearth from the caves.
A team of archeologists from the Earthen Tennessee University began to excavate through the vast remnants of the prehistoric animals and undisturbed sediments.
Professor Jim Mead, who is leading the team have uncovered bones which date back to almost 11,000 years.
The team has unearthed bones which they have identified as that of three distinct species that points out to the fact that their understanding of the South Dakota ecosystem might not be fully complete.
The team has identified the bones as that of pine marten, pika and the platygonus, and extinct relative of the present day peccary.
The findings also suggest that the climate in South Dakota has changed in a large measure over the last ten to twenty thousand years.
South Dakota has not seen the pika but it exists in the higher reaches of the colder mountains regions of the Montana and Wyoming. The existence of bones of pika in the cave suggests that they have been driven to the colder higher parts of the mountains due to warm weather.
These fossils adds new context to the earlier discovered Mammoth site in nearby Hot Springs, SD. The mammoth remains dates back to 26000 years while the bones discovered at the new site are only 11000 years old.
