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Port Kennedy Bone Cave
Location Valley Forge National Historic Park, Port Kennedy, Pennsylvania
Depth 50 ft (15 m)
Discovery c. 1894
Geology Potsdam Limestone
Entrances 1
Hazards buried
Access Restricted

The Port Kennedy Bone Cave is a limestone cave in the Port Kennedy section of Valley Forge National Historical Park, Pennsylvania, USA. The Bone Cave "contained one of the most important middle Pleistocene (Irvingtonian, approximately 750,000 years ago) fossil deposits in North America".

History

The fossils in the cave were investigated by noted 19th-century palaeontologists Edward Drinker Cope, Henry C. Mercer, and Charles M. Wheatley. Some of the fossils, such as an unnamed member of the beetle genus of Dicaelus are unique to this cave and have not been identified elsewhere.

The cave was originally discovered by limestone miners in the 19th century. 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.

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.

Remains found in the cave

Insects

Numerous insect remains were found embedded in clay masses in the cave.

These included:

  • Cychrus wheatleyi
  • Cymindis aurora / punetulatus
  • Dicaelus alutaceus
  • Choeridium(?) ebeninum
  • Phanæus antiquus
  • Aphodius precursor
  • Cicindela (2 sp)

Vertebrates

Mastodon americanus remains were found.

Others included:

Megalonyx

  • Megalonyx wheatleyi (sp. nov.) (2)
  • Megalonyx jeffersonii (14)
  • Megalonyx loxodon (sp. nov.)
  • Megalonyx dissimilis
  • Megalonyx sphenodon
  • Megalonyx tortulus

Arvicola

  • Arvicola sigmodus (sp. nov.) (2)
  • Arvicola speothen (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola tetradelta (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola didelta (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola involuta (sp. nov.)
  • Arvicola hiatidens (sp. nov.)

Mylodon

  • Mylodon harlani

Sciurus

  • Sciurus calycinus

Jaculus

  • Jaculus hudsonius
Others
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