Texas paleontologists and biologists close in on answering lingering questions about two cat skeletons found deep in the caverns.
Brad Wuest, president and CEO of Natural Bridge Caverns sits outside of an attic that possibly led to the surface thousands of years ago. Researchers believe it's a possibility the prehistoric cats came into the caverns using this entrance.The discovery of old cat bones found deep inside the dark cavernous earth has enthralled scientists at Natural Bridge Caverns for more than six decades now.
“That puts them all way back in time in the Pleistocene Epoch — the Ice Age, when woolly mammoths, saber tooth cats and ground sloths were still running around here on the surface,” Moretti said. In March 2022, Wuest and a small team of biologists had been in the caverns working to collect data on the cave-adapted species of invertebrates — such as insects, bugs and snails.
The prints, impressions of claw marks and toe pads, would help give Moretti and other scientists clues to the two cats’ last moments alive.After a three-day retrieval process collecting both skeletons in early 2023, Moretti was later able to confirm that one of the sets of bones was in fact from the same cat as the jaw bone being housed at UT since the 60s.
Over the past year and a half, Moretti has worked with David Ledesma, a UT doctoral candidate who specializes in ancient DNA extraction, and paleobiologist Melissa Kemp, an assistant professor at UT who specializes in using ancient DNA fragments to identify reptile and amphibian fossils from cave samples.
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