File:017 Dripstone 1.jpg

English: Coral Caverns (formerly called Wonderland Caverns) is a small cave located in the town of Manns Choice, southern Pennsylvania, USA.

Coral Caverns was discovered in 1928. Its entrance is in an old, small, agricultural lime quarry. The cave is developed in nearly vertical beds of the Jersey Shore Member of the Keyser Limestone (Upper Silurian). Six hundred feet worth of passages have been mapped here. The rocks are fossiliferous limestones - obvious marine fossils protrude from many of the cave's walls and ceiling areas. The cave's name is in reference to a large wall (really a vertically tilted limestone bedding plane) with what appears to be an abundance of fossil colonial corals. These fossils are actually stromatoporoids. Some have mistakenly referred to these fossils as stromatolites (= layered cyanobacterial buildups). In some areas, silicified bryozoans, crinoid stems, solitary rugose corals, and platycerid gastropods (?) protrude from the limestone matrix. Observed travertine speleothem at Coral Caverns includes dripstone (stalactites, stalagmites, columns), draperies, coralloids (= cave popcorn; = knobstone), and flowstone.

These photos were taken in boreal summer 2006.

Reference:

Wertz (2009) - Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of Coral Caverns, Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 41(4): 16-17.