CORAL
CAVERNS
Coral
Caverns (formerly called Wonderland Caverns) is a small cave located in the
town of Manns Choice, southern Pennsylvania, USA. It was discovered in 1928. The entrance is in an old, small,
agricultural lime quarry.
The cave is
developed in nearly vertical beds of the Jersey Shore Member of the Keyser
Limestone (Upper Silurian).
Six hundred feet worth of passages have been mapped here.
The cave’s
host rocks are fossiliferous limestones - obvious marine fossils protrude from
many of the cave’s walls and ceiling areas. The cave’s name is in reference to
a large wall (really a vertically tilted limestone bedding plane) with what
appears to be an abundance of fossil colonial corals. These fossils are actually stromatoporoids.
Some have mistakenly referred to these fossils as stromatolites (= layered
cyanobacterial buildups). In some areas,
silicified bryozoans, crinoid stems, solitary rugose corals, and platycerid
gastropods (?) protrude from the limestone matrix.
Observed
travertine speleothem at Coral Caverns includes dripstone (stalactites,
stalagmites, columns), draperies, coralloids (cave popcorn; knobstone), and
flowstone.
The photos linked to below were taken in boreal summer 2006.
Coral
Caverns
Some info. synthesized from:
Wertz (2009) - Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of Coral Caverns, Bedford
County, Pennsylvania. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs
41(4): 16-17.