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Your discovery of knowledge of Riverbluff Cave begins at the Missouri Institute of Natural Science. ATTEMPT DURING DAYLIGHT ONLY. A trail leads from this museum allowing access to areas necessary to complete the logging requirements for this cache. Although not a requirement of this cache, a visit to the institute is highly recommended; hours are 8:30-4:30, Monday thru Friday, except holidays, and admission is free, telephone 417-883-0594.
While exploring the area, you will learn about the geology of Riverbluff Cave. You will follow the trail to the top of the hill, which offers a panoramic view of the cave entrance and nearby rock formations. In descending the hill toward the cave entrance, you are walking directly above the main room of the cave below. Coordinates for these various locations, which you will need to visit to log the cache, are listed below as additional waypoints.
To log this cache successfully, please e-mail me the answers to these three questions:
1. Using your GPSr, the approximate difference in altitude between the highest external point of the cave at the top of the hill and the cave entrance.
2. The estimated height and width, in feet, of the cave entrance.
3. Describe the unique features of the Burlington Limestone rock formation north of the cave entrance and estimate its height and width.
Please do not post the answers with your log, just email them to me.
RIVERBLUFF CAVE, Springfield, Greene County, Missouri
Riverbluff Cave was discovered accidentally on September 11, 2001, while the county was blasting for a new road on the outskirts of Springfield, Greene County, Missouri. In order to protect the pristine, untouched condition of the cave, the county covered the entrance and created an air-tight locked door and passageway system to guard against intruders.
During the development phase of the 53-acre Riverbluff Cave site, it was decided that the site was to be used as an educational tool to provide K-12 educators an opportunity in which to conduct group and individualized research. No public tours of this research cave are available at this time.
The cave is approximately 2,000 feet long from main entrance to back room. The heavily decorated main room occupies the first 200 feet of this and runs underground towards the top of the hill. The ground-level surface above this room has over 20 Burlington Limestone rock formations of various sizes and includes cutters and pinnacles. Cave width varies, and there are two side passages that poke out into the nether regions of the cave (one which contains snake remains, and one which is home to the largest congregation of peccary tracks in the world.)
Why is this cave so important? Well, Riverbluff is home to many firsts for the science community.
Inside Riverbluff Cave is a plethora of findings which have been dated at approximately Pleistocene in age, the time period that spanned from 2.2 million to 10,000 years ago. Items include snake skeletons, fossilized turtle shells, numerous small rodent tracks and skeletons, peccary (a type of Ice Age pig) tracks, and numerous short-faced bear and large cat claw marks, which show that this cave was used heavily for shelter before it closed so many years ago. The short-faced bear was the single most deadly predator of the Ice Age. It was bigger than polar and grizzly bears, twice their weight, more carnivorous, and at the top of the food chain. It had a short, sleek, stealthy body, with long, powerful legs, a short face, and a broad powerful muzzle filled with large piercing canines and jagged molars that could tear through the toughest hides and crush the thickest bones, including those of a mammoth or mastodon.
Peccaries are members of the pig/boar family. Peccaries can easily be distinguished by the fact that their tusks point downward. In true pigs the tusks curve upward. In addition, peccaries have less complex cheek teeth, reduced side toes, and large, dorsal musk glands. Both the flat-headed peccary and the long-nosed peccary stood about 30 inches tall at the shoulder and probably weighed around 110 pounds, much larger than the modern Chacoan peccary. It was previously believed that peccary were only dragged into caves as food. However, the massive amount of peccary tracks found in the west passageway of Riverbluff Cave shows that herds of these wild piglike creatures likely used the cave for shelter.
Studying the size, pattern and age of turtle shells, researchers have discovered that these shells likely belong to a never-before-found species of turtle, though at least one of the shells is believed to have been an ancient ancestor to the Missouri box turtle.
A truly amazing find has been the animal dung found inside the cave. Preserved dung is extremely rare, and by studying this fecal matter scientiests are able to discover what the diets of these animals were like.
In addition to animal findings, Riverbluff is peppered with speleothems -- stalactites, stalagmites, and columns which adorn the main room. Cave bacon, draperies, and flowstone decorate the walls, and ceilings full of soda straws can be seen in many places throughout the cave. The difference between this cave, however, and commercial caves is that everything in this cave has gone untouched for at least 55,000 years.
An equally important component of the site is the surface geology. The exposed surface above the cave has one of the finest exposures of fossiliferous Mississippian limestone in the area and contains a diverse echinoderm fauna. As in the case of the subterranean portion of the site, the surface has tremendous potential of providing new insights ino the paleontology and stratigraphy of southwest Missouri. Most Mississippian strata are crystalline, fossiliferous, or micritic (muddy) limestones, interbedded with thin shales. The Mississippian sea began clear, warm, and shallow with profuse carbonate reefs. As time progressed, the seas became muddier as a result of the Acadian orogeny. The Mississippian sea may have covered much of the state, but, as usual, the deposit thinned over the uplift areas and was subsequently removed.
The most typical Mississippian strata is the Burlington Limestone. This crystalline fossiliferous limestone covers most of Missouri and is also found in Iowa and Arkansas. These usually include layers of chert nodules and a sedimentary structure caused by pressure solution called "stylolites" which may also become filled with chert or quartz. During the Mississippian, crinoids were abundant. These echinoderms resemble plants, complete with a calyx (head) and a holdfast resembling roots. Although they are actually animals, the common name for crinoids is "sea-lilies". The most common Mississippian fossils occur after death when the "stem" breaks apart into numerous fragments. Look for these in the rock formations above the cave entrance.
So, as you can see, Riverbluff is extremely important. But why are we able to find all these clues about our past? Because of the lack of two things within the cave: air and people. Air dries out a cave and essentially kills it; the passageway to Riverbluff is completely air-tight. And there is no evidence that before the blasting crew opened it, there was ever a human inside the cave. Humans are the number one contaminant inside a cave; even the lint on your clothes can have a lasting effect on a cave.
Source information for this earthcache provided primarily by the websites for Riverbluff Cave (www.riverbluffcave.com) and the Missouri Institute of Natural Science (www.monatsci.com).
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