Abstract
DURING the last few weeks Dr. Leith Adams, F.R.S., and myself have been exploring an ossiferous cave at Shandon, near here, under a grant from the Royal Irish Academy. Bones of mammoth, reindeer, bear, wolf, horse, and hare, were found in the débris of a quarry here in 1859, and are now in the Royal Museum, Dublin. We have worked through a considerable quantity of limestone breccia and stalagmite, in which and in a thin underlying deposit of cave-earth we have found numerous bones of the above-mentioned animals, indicating at least two individuals of mammoth, eighteen of reindeer, and five of horse, for which latter this is as yet the sole recorded locality in Ireland. The bones of bear show extreme age and signs of disease, and we have found the cast antler of a reindeer. Some of the bones have been gnawed, probably by wolves, and many have been broken by the falling-in of the roof of the cave. Though we have broken into a large chamber, we are as yet unable to form a clear conception of the original form of the cavern. A full account of the cave previous to the present exploration was given by Prof. Harkness in the Geological Magazine for June, 1870.
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BOULGER, G. Irish Cave Exploration. Nature 12, 212 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/012212b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/012212b0
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