Paw prints lead spelunkers to ancient cat bones, untouched for millennia in Texas cave
A team of spelunkers strapped on their gear, faced the enveloping darkness and headed into the depths of a Texas cavern with one goal in mind: find and retrieve ancient wildcat bones.
The six-day recovery expedition followed a series of wildcat discoveries in the Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio, the caverns said in a December news release.
A survey expedition in 2021 found fossilized wildcat bones embedded in a cave formation, cavern officials said. A biological survey in March 2022 spotted an “unusual set of cat tracks” near the mouth of a pit, cave officials said. Following these paw prints, surveyors found even more cat bones at the bottom of the nearby pit.
A third wildcat skeleton, this one “nearly complete,” was found later in another section of the cavern, the release said.
The string of discoveries led Natural Bridge Caverns to partner with The University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences on a recovery expedition, aiming to further understand ancient wildcats, the university said in a December news release.
Wild Texas ancient cats were “rare and mysterious” creatures, the release said. The cat fossils found were “about the size of today’s domestic cats,” John Moretti, a university doctoral student and paleontologist said in the release.
The joint expedition set out on Tuesday, Jan. 10, Natural Bridge Caverns wrote on Facebook. To reach the feline fossils, spelunkers ventured a mile into the cave and rappelled down a 65-foot pit and another 50-foot pit, per the university release.
At the bottom of the pits, paleontologists collected multiple wildcat bones, including a lower jawbone with teeth, a leg bone and feet bones, Moretti said in a video shared by cavern officials. The team recovered the bones of two wildcat skeletons, cavern officials said on Jan. 16.
The age of the wildcat tracks and bones is uncertain.
“They could be as young as 2,000 years old or as old as 20,000,” Moretti told The San Antonio Express News. “These cats could be from the end of the ice age.”
Many questions about the ancient cat fossils remain unanswered.
“Is it a bob cat? Ocelot? Margay? Jaguarundi? Something else entirely?” cavern officials wrote on Facebook.
Using the fossil skeletons, researchers hope to figure out what species these cats are and if they left the nearby paw prints.
Natural Bridge Caverns is about 25 miles northeast of San Antonio.
This story was originally published January 17, 2023 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Paw prints lead spelunkers to ancient cat bones, untouched for millennia in Texas cave."
