Kingston Saltpeter Cave

(Kingston Saltpeter Cave and 40 acres of surrounding forest is an NSS Nature Preserve)

Vertebrate paleontological discoveries in Georgia have historically been made in the coastal areas of the state, with only sporadic finds being made elsewhere. In 1950 a tooth of the American Mastodon was discovered on a farm in Bartow County, and a partial tapir mandible was found in 1955 in Anderson Spring Cave in Walker County. The first deposit of local fauna of Pleistocene vertebrates came to light with the discovery in 1963 at the Ladds Quarry in Bartow County of some 100 taxa. In 1964 a Pleistocene bear mandible was discovered in Black?s Bluff Cave, Floyd County.

Vertebrate fossils were discovered in Kingston Saltpeter Cave, also in Bartow County, in 1980. From this deposit identification has been made of 148 vertebrate taxa and at least sixteen invertebrate taxa. This new local fauna, when considered with the collection from Ladds and finds at Yarbrough Cave, Bartow County during the 1980s, provides an increasingly clearer picture of the past climatic and vegetational conditions in this part of the country during the last Pleistocene. What we continue to see is a mixture of species demonstrative of a variety of habitats, and the co-existence of fauna presently inhabiting regions farther to the north, south, and west. As more sites are discovered and analyzed, a more thorough understanding of Pleistocene life will be possible.

In this volume we present the discoveries that have been made at Kingston Saltpeter Cave to date. There is still much remaining that needs to be done in that cave as well as in other caves in Georgia, both in studying the finds already made as well as in making new discoveries. It is our hope that with the publication of this data, others will be encouraged to search among the caves of the state for further evidence of the past.

Edited by Joel M. Sneed and Larry O. Blair
2004
70 pages, softbound