Kirkdale Cave

Kirkdale Cave is a cave and fossil site located in Kirkdale near Kirkbymoorside in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire, England [1]. William Buckland analyzed the cave and its contents in December 1821 and determined that the bones were the remains of animals brought in by hyenas who used it for a den, and not a result of the Biblical flood floating corpses in from distant lands, as he had first thought [1]. The fossil bones found in the cave included those of straight-tusked elephants, hippopotamuses, the narrow-nosed rhinoceros, cave hyena, cave lion, Irish elk, brown bears, red deer and fallow deer [1]. The fossilized remains were embedded in a silty layer sandwiched between layers of stalagmite [1]. The entrance to the cave was found by limestone quarry workers in the summer of 1821 [1].