Cumberland Bone Cave
The Cumberland Bone Cave is a fossil-filled cave along the western slope of Wills Mountain on the outskirts of Cumberland, Maryland near Corriganville in Allegany County, Maryland.
History and paleontology
In 1912 workers excavating a cut for the Western Maryland Railway along Andy's Ridge broke into the partly filled cave. A local naturalist, Raymond Armbruster, observed fossil bones among the rocks that had been blasted loose and were being removed from the cut. Armbruster notified paleontologists at the Smithsonian Institution, and James W. Gidley began excavating that same year. The cave later became known as the "Cumberland Bone Cave".
Between 1912 and 1916, Gidley excavated the Cumberland Bone Cave, where 41 genera of mammals were found, about 16 per cent of which are extinct. Numerous excellent skulls and enough bones to reconstruct skeletons for a number of the species were present. Skeletons of the
Today very little of this cave is still in existence, though some excavations are still being performed by the