Vertical shaft (Mammoth Dome, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, USA) 21

            Western Kentucky's Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system on Earth, with 426 miles known and mapped as of March 2024.  The name does not refer to the early discovery of fossil mastodon or mammoth bones here.  Rather, the name refers to the immense size of many rooms and passages.

The system has a variety of cave passages: tubular passages, canyon passages, vertical shafts (domepits), keyhole passages, and giant canyon passages.

Mammoth Dome is a large, complexly-shaped domepit that can be viewed during the 2 hour, 2 mile long Historic Tour.  Domepits are large, silo-shaped, dissolutional features in caves.  They form in the vadose zone (above the water table) as downward-moving groundwater dissolves limestone.  Mammoth Dome corresponds to a surface sinkhole (Mammoth Dome Sink) that can be observed along a hiking trail originating near the park's visitor center.

One measurement puts Mammoth Dome at 150 feet tall.  Park signage asserts that it is 192 feet tall.

Flutes are common on the walls of vertical shafts.  They are vertically-oriented dissolutional grooves formed as water moves downward.

The rocks in Mammoth Dome include the lower Ste. Genevieve Limestone and the upper St. Louis Limestone (both Middle Mississippian).

Locality: Mammoth Dome, Mammoth Cave, west-central Kentucky, USA
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(accessed with park permission)

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Taken on: March 12, 2024

Tags:

vertical

shaft

domepit

domepits

Mammoth

Dome

Cave

Ridge

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Mississippian

Ste.

Genevieve

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St.

Louis

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fluting

dissolution

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Sets appears in: • Geology, History, Archaeology, Biology of Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky, USA) • Mammoth Dome & Mammoth Dome Sink (Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, USA) more » • Vertical shafts (domepits) (Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, USA) « less

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