Port Kennedy Bone Cave

The Port Kennedy Bone Cave is a limestone cave in the Port Kennedy section of Valley Forge National Historical Park, Pennsylvania, USA.[1] The Bone Cave "contained one of the most important middle Pleistocene (Irvingtonian, approximately 750,000 years ago) fossil deposits in North America".[2]

Port Kennedy Bone Cave
LocationValley Forge National Historic Park, Port Kennedy, Pennsylvania
Depth50 ft (15 m)
Discoveryc. 1894
GeologyPotsdam Limestone
Entrances1
Hazardsburied
AccessRestricted

History

The fossils in the cave were investigated by noted 19th-century palaeontologists Edward Drinker Cope, Henry C. Mercer, and Charles M. Wheatley. Some of the fossils, such as an unnamed member of the beetle Genus of Dicaelus are unique to this cave and have not been identified elsewhere.[3]

The cave was originally discovered by limestone miners in the 19th century.[4] It was later filled in with asbestos-bearing industrial refuse and the cave's location was lost. The village of Port Kennedy was largely demolished in the 1960s during construction of the U.S. Route 422 Expressway. The tract containing the cave became part of the Valley Forge National Historical Park in 1978. In 2005, the National Park Service and geologists rediscovered the cave.[5]

It has been rumored that the quarry near where the cave is located near holds a crashed locomotive, which was used in the shooting of a now lost silent film in 1915, The Valley of Lost Hope.[5]

Remains found in the cave

Insects

Numerous insect remains were found imbedded in clay masses in the cave.[3]

These included:

Vertebrates

Mastodon americanus remains were found.[6]

Others included:[7]

Megalonyx

  • Megalonyx wheatleyi (sp. nov.) (2)
  • Megalonyx jeffersonii (14)
  • Megalonyx loxodon (sp. nov.)
  • Megalonyx dissimilis
  • Megalonyx sphenodon
  • Megalonyx tortulus

Arvicola

  • Arvicola sigmodus (sp. nov.) (2)
  • Arvicola speothen (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola tetradelta (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola didelta (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola involuta (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola hiatidens (sp. nov.)

Mylodon

  • Mylodon harlani

Sciurus

  • Sciurus calycinus

Jaculus

  • Jaculus hudsonius
Others
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References
  1. Circa-1894 photo of the entrance to the Bone Cave, from Bucks County Historical Society.
  2. Bechtel, Timothy D.; Jaime L. Hojdila; Samuel H. Baughman II; Toni DeMayo; Edward Doheny (2005). "Relost and refound: Detection of a paleontologically, historically, cinematically(?), and environmentally important solution feature in the carbonate belt of southeastern Pennsylvania". The Leading Edge. 24 (5): 537. doi:10.1190/1.1926813. ISSN 1070-485X.
  3. Society, American Entomological; Horn, M.D., George M. (December 1876). "Notes on some Coleopterous Remains from the bone cave at Port Kennedy, Penna.". Transactions of the American Entomological Society. 5. The Society. pp. 241–245. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
  4. "PORT KENNEDY BONE CAVE MONTGOMERY COUNTY" (PDF). DCNR. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  5. Hojdila, Jamie; Toni DeMayo; Sam Baughman; Tim Bechtel; Margaret Carfioli (Fall 2005). "Sidebar--The long-lost cave has been found!". Park Science. National Park Service. 23 (2). ISSN 1090-9966. Retrieved 17 February 2011.
  6. Cope, ED. (1871) Preliminary report on the vertebrata discovered in the Port Kennedy Bone Cave. American Philosophical Society, 12:73-102.
  7. Society, American Philosophical; Cope, E. D. (1873). "PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE VERTEBRATA DISCOVERED IN THE PORT KENNEDY BONE CAVE". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge. 12. The Society. pp. 73–98. Retrieved 18 February 2011.

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