AUSTIN, Texas — Two University of Texas at Austin scientists snorkeling through an underwater cave in Comal County stumbled onto something unexpected – the fossilized remains of Ice Age animals that had been hidden beneath Central Texas for thousands of years.
John Moretti and co-author John Young say they gained access to Bender’s Cave, a previously unmapped cave on private property in Comal County, where a trove of well-preserved bones had remained untouched for millennia. The discovery, detailed in the newly published study, is offering scientists a rare window into the prehistoric ecosystems that once dominated the Central Texas landscape.
“There were fossils everywhere, just everywhere, in a way that I haven’t seen in any other cave,” Moretti said. “It was just bones all over the floor.”…