Huge wonderland found under Jenolan Caves

Discovering a hidden tunnel that leads to a massive previously unknown cavern is about as good as it gets for a caver.

And when this happens under the nose of millions of tourists at the most trodden-through set of caves in Australia, the Jenolan Caves, it is even more exciting.

Hundreds of metres of spectacular caves have been found by an intrepid team from the Sydney University Speleological Society, the first significant find at the cave system for almost 40 years.

They are hard to reach, but worth the uncomfortable journey. Purple-tinged flowstones and rare red-coloured stalactites and stalagmites paint a vivid underground portrait.

The floors are covered with light-reflecting crystals. Unusually patterned bands of gravity-defying helictites line the walls.

Intricate multi-tiered domes and crystallised streams also form part of the newly discovered network, which is too difficult to access to form part of a future tourist track.

Older Neanderthal man in Gibraltar

New findings have been published in Nature magazine

An international team of scientists, most of them Spanish, have discovered evidence of Neanderthal man in Gibraltar.

The find, in the Gorham cave on the rock, would seem to indicate a more modern Neanderthal man was living in the area than previously thought – from the time between 32,000 and 24,000 years ago.

Gibraltar biologist Clive Finlayson has been explaining the find to Nature magazine.