Ursa Minor (cave)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Ursa Minor Cave

Ursa Minor Cave is part of Sequoia National Park, a naturally formed system of caves in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. The cave was discovered in August of 2006 by four amateur cave explorers, who found a grapefruit sized hole on a cliff face in the Sierra Nevada mountains. After widening the hole to allow for human entry, the explorers discovered one of the most spectaular caves in the western U.S. The cave has since been named Ursa Minor, because of the large bear skeleton (g. Ursus) found near the entry to the cave.
Recently covered in an article by the September 2007 issue of National Geographic, the cave is attracting many other scientists and researchers, in the hopes of finding new spiecies of troglobites, or organisms that live in the complete darkness afforded by cave dwelling. Similar caves such as the Kaweah cave and Lost Soldiers cave have yielded over twenty new species of these exotic and rare species, which are sometimes limited to only a single pool of water or room of a cave.