The Cumberland Bone Cave is a fossil-filled cave along the western slope of Wills Mountain

Wills Mountain

Wills Mountain is a quartzite-capped ridge in the Ridge and Valley physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania and Maryland, USA, extending from near Bedford, Pennsylvania to near Cumberland, Maryland...

 on the outskirts of Cumberland, Maryland

Cumberland, Maryland

Cumberland is a city in the far western, Appalachian portion of Maryland, United States. It is the county seat of Allegany County, and the primary city of the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 20,859, and the metropolitan area had a...

 near Corriganville

Corriganville, Maryland

Corriganville is an unincorporated town in Allegany County, Maryland, USA. The town lies north of Cumberland at the confluence of Wills Creek and Jennings Run...

 in Allegany County, Maryland

Allegany County, Maryland

Allegany County is a county located in the northwestern part of the US state of Maryland. It is part of the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of 2010, the population was 75,087. Its county seat is Cumberland...

. In 1912 workers excavating a cut for the Western Maryland Railway

Western Maryland Railway

The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad which operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation. The WM became part of the Chessie System in 1973 and ceased operating its lines...

 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

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

, and James W. Gidley began excavating that same year. The cave later became known as the "Cumberland Bone Cave".

Between 1912 to 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 Pleistocene Cave Bear

Cave Bear

The cave bear was a species of bear that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene and became extinct at the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum about 27,500 years ago....

 and an extinct Saber-toothed cat

Saber-toothed cat

Saber-toothed cat or Sabre-toothed cat refers to the extinct subfamilies of Machairodontinae , Barbourofelidae , and Nimravidae as well as two families related to marsupials that were found worldwide from the Eocene Epoch to the end of the Pleistocene Epoch ,...

 from the Bone Cave are on permanent exhibit in the Ice Age Mammal exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History

National Museum of Natural History

The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. Admission is free and the museum is open 364 days a year....

, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Many of the fossilized bones date from 200,000 years ago. The Cumberland Bone cave represents one of the finest Pleistocene-era

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 faunas known from eastern North America.

Today very little of this cave is still in existence, though some excavations are still being performed by the Maryland DNR. The remains can be seen on the south wall of the cut, at the same level of the neighboring railbed, and at the top of the north wall. The connecting chambers and passages have been removed. The Cumberland Bone Cave is developed in the vertical planes of the Keyser Limestone at an elevation of 840 feet (256 m) .

Catastrophism View

The idea that a world-wide flood brang all these different creatures together makes much sense.

External links

• The Cumberland Bone Cave: A Window into Maryland's Past from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources
  Maryland Department of Natural Resources
  The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is a government agency in the state of Maryland charged with maintaining natural resources such as the 66 state parks, public lands, state forests, state waterways, wildlife and recreation areas....