Tamana caves
Encyclopedia
Tamana caves is a cave
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...

 system located on the northern slope of Mount Tamana in eastern Trinidad
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...

. Mount Tamana is a 307-metre flat topped hill of Miocene
Miocene
The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about . The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words and and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene...

 Guaracara Limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 of the Tamana Formation in the eastern Central Range
Central Range, Trinidad and Tobago
The Central Range is a mountain range on the island of Trinidad. It extends diagonally across the island and is a low-lying range with swampy areas rising to rolling hills...

.

Julian Kenny
Julian Kenny
Julian Stanley "Jake" Kenny was a Trinidadian zoologist, columnist, author) and Professor of Zoology at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies and an Independent Senator in the fifth and sixth Parliaments...

 described the main cave as consisting of 18 separate sections. He documented two chimneys and a "walk-in chamber". The walk-in chamber connected to a "boulder chamber" that was heavily used by bats, and to a crawl hole which connected to the remainder of the cave system. Beyond the crawl hole was a subterranean stream
Subterranean river
A subterranean river is a river that runs wholly or partly beneath the ground surface – one where the riverbed does not represent the surface of the Earth ....

 and a passage which connected to the chimney area. Beyond that the passages descended further, ending in what Kenny called the "New Deep" and the "Far Deep", areas which had not been explored at the time of his publication.

Kenny reported that eleven bat
Bat
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...

species permanently roosted in the cave, while a twelfth species roosted occasionally in an adjacent dry cave. Certain species were restricted to specific areas of the cave, while others were scattered throughout.
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