SAN ANTONIO – Cat bones discovered in two spots deep within Natural Bridge Caverns are getting the attention of scientists around the world.
KSAT first reported on this rare find inside the caves in 2023.
”We have reason to be excited,” said John Moretti, a doctoral student at the University of Texas School of Geosciences and the lead researcher on the project. “This discovery in Natural Bridge Caverns is pretty much unprecedented.”
Why would finding cat bones be a big deal? It turns out cat skeletons are hard to find and identify, and caves aren’t typical cat habitats.
Incredibly, new dating techniques have determined that the bones are around 11,500 years old. It’s believed that the cats may have fallen into an opening and wondered deep inside the dark, lengthy caverns before falling into a deeper pit.
“We’ve always wondered, you know, how in the world did this cat get this far back into the cave and pass up literally thousands of other places where it could have fallen, you know, to its death to finally fall here at this pit,” said Brad Wuest with Natural Bridge Caverns, referring to a hole called the ‘dungeon’ where one set of cat bones were discovered.
Wuest and Moretti took us along for another look at the “dungeon” and the “inferno,” the latter where a more recent set of cat bones was found.
Here’s a timeline of how the discovery unfolded:
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In 1963, a portion of a cat was discovered deep inside Natural Bridge Caverns
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The bones were taken to the University of Texas, where they were held for safekeeping
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While an interesting find, due to a lack of technology and human handling, no DNA could be taken from the bones, and scientists remained unsure of what type of cat was represented.
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Then, in 2022, cavers found more bones near the same spot as the original discovery. It was determined to be from the same cat.
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The bones, preserved inside the cave, contained proteins and ancient DNA. DNA testing continues and should be completed within a year.
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Also, in 2022, the researchers, by pure chance, found a separate set of bones in a different part of the cave that dated to the same time. These bones did not contain DNA but were tested for age.
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Also, cat tracks have been found in the cave over the years, which is also considered a rare find.
”Whenever we do find species like this in the fossil record, it’s bits and pieces, and at most, one half of a lower jaw, but we have far more than that,” explained Moretti.
The discovery could give a clearer picture of life in the Texas Hill Country at the tail end of the Ice Age. It was a time of great change.
”These big extinct creatures like mammoths, saber tooth cats, giant ground sloths, they are typical of the Pleistocene, the Ice Age, and they’re going extinct,” said Moretti of the time period. “The world is shifting to something much more like we know.”
This explains why these cats were smaller. State-of-the-art DNA technology, which is needed with ancient specimens like this, is now zeroing in on the cat’s species. That determination could be the biggest break of all since cat species are hard to distinguish. As of now, they’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities.
”So it could be a Margay. It could be a Jaguarundi. And finally, it could be some extinct relative of either of those species,” explained Moretti.
None of them call Texas home anymore. The final DNA results should arrive by next year.
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