SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The National Park Service is beginning to excavate the mouth of an unexplored cave in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and researchers believe it could help broaden our understanding of how the region’s climate has changed over thousands of years.
A park service worker found Persistence Cave in 2004 on the grounds of Wind Cave National Park, in western South Dakota, but the agency kept it quiet, partly to prevent amateur spelunkers from trying to explore the well-preserved site.
On Monday, a team of scientists led by East Tennessee State University professor Jim Mead will begin unearthing the entrance of the cave, hauling out bags of sediment and animal bones to be carefully analyzed. They have already found bones dating back nearly 11,000 years and the remains of at least three species that hadn’t been found in the region before — the pika, pine marten and platygonus, an extinct relative of the modern-day peccary.
While it’s always exciting to find an extinct species that once roamed the region, Mead said it’s even more ecologically important to him to discover that an existing animal like the pika once lived there. The rodentlike mammal can still be found in cold, mountainous climates of North America, suggesting the environment of the Black Hills was once quite different, he said.