Kirkdale Cave
| Kirkdale Cave | |
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Entrance to Kirkdale Cave
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 Showing location of Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire
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| Location | Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire, England |
| OS grid | SE 76781 8561 |
| Coordinates | 54°15′42″N 0°57′36″W / 54.261588°N 0.960088°WCoordinates: 54°15′42″N 0°57′36″W / 54.261588°N 0.960088°W |
| Length | 436 metres (1,430 ft) |
| Elevation | 58 metres (190 ft) |
| Discovery | 1821 |
| Geology | Jurassic Corallian Limestone |
| Entrances | 1 |
| Access | Entrance is in face of old quarry |
Kirkdale Cave is a cave located in Kirkdale near Kirkbymoorside in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire, England. The cave was discovered by workmen in 1821, and was found to contain fossilized bones of a variety of mammals not currently found in Great Britain, including hippopotamus, the farthest north any such remains have ever been found, elephant, and the remains of numerous cave hyenas. William Buckland analyzed the cave and its contents in December 1821. He determined that the bones were from the remains of animals brought into the cave by hyenas who had been using it for a den, and not a result of the biblical flood floating animal remains in from distant lands as had first been thought. His reconstruction of an ancient eco-system from detailed analysis of fossil evidence was admired at the time, and considered to be an example of how geohistorical research should be done.
The cave was extended from its original length of 175 metres (574 ft) to 436 metres (1,430 ft) by Scarborough Caving Club in 1995. A survey was published in Descent magazine.
The fossil bones found in the cave included elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, hyenas, bison, giant deer, smaller mammals and birds. This is the northernmost site in the world where hippopotamus remains have been found. It also included a considerable amount of fossilized hyena faeces. The fossilized remains were embedded in a silty layer sandwiched between layers of stalagmite.
The discovery at Kirkdale occurred in the wake of new forms of stratigraphic dating developed during the Enlightenment. As was the case for many nineteenth century fossils, the bones in Kirkdale were originally found by local inhabitants. The entrance to the cave was found by limestone quarry workers in the summer of 1821. The quarry workers assumed that the abundant bones buried in the cave floor were the remains of cattle that had been dumped in the cave after dying from some past epidemic. They used some of the bones to fill potholes in a nearby road, where an amateur naturalist noticed them and realized that they were not the remains of livestock. This attracted the attention of numerous fossil collectors. Some of the fossils were sent to William Clift the curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; he identified some of the bones as the remains of hyenas larger than any of the modern species. At the same time William Buckland was told about the cave and shown some of the fossils by a colleague at Oxford.
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Wikipedia