[Nmcaver] Today's Cave News (3 arrticles)

[Lee H. Skinner]

Top Australian cave art site faces industrial expansion

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0601/p05s01-woap.html
  	
Top Australian cave art site faces industrial expansion
By Nick Squires | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Their meaning is a mystery, their creators are long 
dead, and no one knows how many there are. The hundreds of thousands of 
engravings etched into boulders and cliffs on a remote desert peninsula 
in Australia form the world's largest collection of rock art.

Now there are fears that the planned expansion of an industrial site 
could destroy many of the Aboriginal engravings.

The petroglyphs, which depict human figures, abstract motifs and 
kangaroos, emus, and the extinct Tasmanian tiger, are scattered across 
the Burrup peninsula.

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Whale of a fossil coming to Riverbluff Cave field house

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060531/BREAKING01/60531016

The park naturalist with Ice Age Riverbluff Cave announced today that a 
40-million-year-old fossil whale skeleton will be delivered to the cave 
field house Friday morning.

The whale fossil, which will be nearly 80 feet long when it is 
completely cleaned and mounted, will be the first and only skeleton of a 
cynthiacetus maxwelli whale on display in the world, according to a 
statement from naturalist Matt Forir.

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Hidden Ecosystem Discovered Beneath Cement Quarry

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197667,00.html

At a cement quarry in Israel, researchers have discovered eight 
previously unknown species of small creatures in a newfound underground 
cave.

The limestone cave has long been sealed off from it surroundings — even 
outside water cannot seep through an overlying layer of chalk — and it 
contains an entire ecosystem unlike anything known.

The newly named Ayalon Cave stretches for about 1.5 miles and is "unique 
in the world," said Amos Frumkin of the Hebrew University Department of 
Geography.

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