Swansea Cave is a cave

Cave

A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...

 and palaeontological site in the Saint Catherine Parish of south-eastern Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

.

Description

The site lies on private land in the Worthy Park district at an altitude of 385 m above sea level and is surrounded by forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

 and sugarcane

Sugarcane

Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...

 cultivation. The geology is white limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

. The cave is a dry, fossil stream passage, 1170 m in length, which has collapsed in three places. The main entrance is 10 m high by 12 m wide.

Fauna

The cave contains a large, mixed roost of over 10,000 bat

Bat

Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...

s between the second and third collapse points, as well as small numbers of the Jamaican fruit bat

Jamaican fruit bat

The Jamaican, Common or Mexican fruit bat is a fruit bat native to Central and South America, as well as the Greater and many of the Lesser Antilles. It is also an uncommon resident of the Southern Bahamas...

 near the main entrance. Invertebrate

Invertebrate

An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...

s found in the cave include the American cockroach

American cockroach

The American cockroach , also known as the waterbug, or misidentified as the palmetto bug , is the largest species of common cockroach, and often considered a pest. None of the Periplaneta species are endemic to the Americas; despite the name, P...

, cave cricket

Rhaphidophoridae

The orthopteran family Rhaphidophoridae includes the cave wetas, cave crickets, camelback crickets, camel crickets, spider crickets and sand treaders, of the suborder Ensifera; in some regions, such as Missouri and Virginia, these crickets are referred to as "Cricket Spiders"...

s, amblypygids, and the rare Onychophoran Speleoperipatus speleus. Fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

 animals discovered at the site include the Jamaican Flightless Ibis

Jamaican Flightless Ibis

The Jamaican Ibis, Jamaican Flightless Ibis or Clubbed-wing Ibis is an extinct bird species of the ibis subfamily uniquely characterized by its club-like wings...

(Xenicibis xympithecus).

Sources