Discovered the largest underwater cave on the planet
A team of researchers discovered the world's largest underwater cave system with a total length of 357 km in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Archaeologists have found the largest underwater cave ever found under the sea off the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico,International Business TimesFilled with ancient artifacts, this extensive underwater network of tunnels could help researchers discover more about the Mayan culture.
The 10,000-year-old submerged cave actually connects the two largest submerged tunnel networks on Earth, Sac Actun and Dos Ojos in Tulum, Quintana Roo state, making it the largest cave ever found. The combined cave is now known as the Sac Actun system.
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A diver explores in the cave. Photo:GAM. |
The new discovery is the result of more than 10 months of underwater exploration by a team from Mexico's National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) and the Great Maya Aquifer Project (GAM). "This has been an effort of more than 20 years, covering hundreds of kilometers of flooded caves in Quintana Roo, of which I spent 14 years exploring this massive Sac Actun system. Now it is everyone's job to preserve it," said Robert Schmittner, a German researcher who led the GAM expedition.
"We got really close a couple of times. On two occasions, we were just a meter from the seam between the two large cave systems. It's like following the veins in your body. It's a maze of passages that sometimes merge and sometimes diverge. We had to be very careful," Schmittner said.
The vast network of limestone caves contains near-perfectly preserved artifacts such as Mayan ceramic vases. A treasure trove of ancient flora and fauna including human skulls as well as the skeletons of giant sloths, tigers and extinct plants are also preserved in the caves.
"This vast cave can be considered the most important archaeological site in the world, because it is associated with more than 100 archaeological contexts, including evidence of the first settlers in the Americas, as well as the Maya civilization," said Guillermo de Anda, researcher at INAH and director of the GAM project.
The team also found another independent 18-kilometer-long tunnel north of the Sac Actun system, which they have dubbed the “Mother of All Sinkholes.” They plan to analyze the water quality and study the biodiversity of the cave system.
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