Man Rescued From Ellisons Cave

A team of about 80 rescuers took nearly 21 hours to retrieve a North Whitehall Township man from one of the deepest pit caves in the country after he slipped and fell over weekend in Ellisons Cave in Georgia.

Dwight Kempf, 54, had rappelled the 586-foot-deep Fantastic Pit within the Pigeon Mountain Area and fell about 30 feet while walking on a horizontal passageway Sunday afternoon.

Ellisons Cave is in Walker County, about half way between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn., and is the deepest in the East at 1,067 feet. The cave, which includes the Fantastic Pit at 586 feet followed by the Incredible Pit at 440 feet, is 12 miles long and traverses a mountain.

Kempf reportedly fell somewhere between those pits, first falling about 30 feet and landing on rocks and then bouncing and falling another 30-40 feet, according to a rescuer interviewed on ABC News.

Federal Protections For Missouri Cave Fish and Habitat Open to Public Comment

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is considering an 18-year conservation project aimed at saving the grotto sculpin, a small fish found mostly in cave streams and only within Perry County, Missouri.

Sculpins, as a group, have flattened, scaleless bodies, small eyes, wide mouths, enlarged pectoral fins and large heads that tapers abruptly into a comparatively slender body, which measures approximately 2.5 to 4 inches.

The overall color of the fish, which lays about 200 eggs during the late winter-early spring spawning season, is light tan to bleached tan, with an unpigmented underside.

The wildlife agency says it will cost between $140,000 and $4 million to preserve the species, which was discovered by a college student back in 1991 and is currently not on the federal list of endangered species.

Smokies, Mammoth Cave part of MTSU science study

Ten college students from across the country are taking part in a Middle Tennessee State University environmental research project.

The event runs from through July 26 and is funded by the National Science Foundation.

The school says the students will search for ancient inactive seismic faults, investigate water and air quality and explore the ecology of rare cedar glade habitats. The intensified research project involves the disciplines of Earth science, chemistry and biology.

Field trips will take them to Mammoth Cave and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The NSF grant of $368,000 also will enable MTSU to host similar studies in 2014 and 2015.

Source: Kentucky.com

Cave paintings uncovered in Burgos, Mexico

Archaeologists in Mexico have found 4,926 well-preserved cave paintings in the north-eastern region of Burgos.

The images in red, yellow, black and white depict humans, animals and insects, as well as skyscapes and abstract scenes.

The paintings were found in 11 different sites - but the walls of one cave were covered with 1,550 scenes.

The area in which they were found was previously thought not to have been inhabited by ancient cultures.

The paintings suggest that at least three groups of hunter-gatherers dwelled in the San Carlos mountain range.

Experts have not yet been able to date the paintings, but hope to chemically analyse their paint to find out their approximate age.'No objects'

"We have not found any ancient objects linked to the context, and because the paintings are on ravine walls and in the rainy season the sediments are washed away, all we have is gravel," said archaeologist Gustavo Ramirez, from the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (Inah).

In one of the caves, the experts found depictions of the atlatl, a pre-Hispanic hunting weapon that had not yet been seen in other paintings in the Tamaulipas state.

The paintings are being considered an important find because they document the presence of pre-Hispanic peoples in a region where "before it was said that nothing was there", Mr Ramirez said.

New cave-dwelling whip scorpion species found

Rowlandius ubajara (above) is one of two new cave-dwelling
whip scorpion species discovered in northeastern Brazil.

Two new species of short-tailed whip scorpions have been found living deep inside the cool, humid caves of northeastern Brazil, a study reports.

Whip scorpions are not true scorpions, but rather part of a group of arachnids that don't have stings and are not poisonous. They possess a whip-like tail, but look more like ants.

Previously, scientists thought whip scorpions came predominantly from the Caribbean. The new species, Rowlandius ubajara and Rowlandius potiguara, are some of the first from South America.