The cave was originally discovered by limestone miners in the 19th century.[3] It was later filled in with asbestos-bearing industrial refuse and the cave's location was lost. The village of Port Kennedy was largely demolished in the 1960s during construction of the U.S. Route 422 Expressway. The tract containing the cave became part of the Valley Forge National Historical Park in 1978. In 2005, the National Park Service and geologists rediscovered the cave.[4]
It has been rumored that the quarry near where the cave is located near holds a crashed locomotive, which was used in the shooting of a now lost silent film in 1915, The Valley of Lost Hope.[4]
Remains found in the cave
Further information:
American cheetah, and Wheatley's ground sloth. Some extinct species are also exclusive to the site, many of them being described by Edward Drinker Cope during the late 19th century. In addition to the prehistoric animals, a myriad of early records of living mammals have been unearthed from the locale such as American black bears,[5]North American river otters,[6][7] and Gray foxes,[7] giving more insight to their evolution. The age of the site falls within the IrvingtonianNALMA (North American Land Mammal Age), a period of terrestrial mammal evolution dating from 1.9 million to 250,000 BCE years ago.[7][8] This accords with the global cooling and glaciation of the Lower to Middle Pleistocene, which preceded the final glacial age of the Upper Pleistocene in the Rancholabrean stage.[8][9] Some of the species during the Irvingtonian present at Port Kennedy such as the saber-toothed cat and short-faced bear came from smaller forms of their respective genera, with sizes increasing during the Rancholabrean.[10][11]
Fossils from Port Kennedy Bone Cave are not exclusively from mammals however, with many fossils from turkeys, snakes, turtles, and a unique giant tortoise reported. Notably, Port Kennedy bears a large menagerie of extinct beetles.[12] All of the beetles were briefly described by George Horn in 1874,[12] but little new insight into the remains has been made.[7] Plant fossils too have been recovered, including mosses and a variety of trees.[7]
^Hall, E. R. (1936). Mustelid Mammals from the Pleistocene of North America: With Systematic Notes on Some Recent Members of the Gerera Mustela, Taxidea and Mephitis.
^ abcdeDaeschler, E., Spamer, E. E., & Parris, D. C. (1993). Review and new data on the Port Kennedy local fauna and flora (Late Irvingtonian), Valley Forge National Historical Park, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The Mosasaur, 5, 23-41.
