Download PDF - Speleogenesis

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NCKRI Special Paper No. 1
by rising flow and bears no signs of any water table
development, is important for interpretation of these
secondary formations in the context of sulfuric acid
speleogenesis (see below for discussion of the Guadalupe
Mountains). Both Amazing Maze Cave and Robber Baron
Cave are representative, in morphological and geological
respects, of a great number of maze caves throughout the
United States, so that their identification as transverse
hypogenic caves serves to establish this mode of
speleogenesis as the dominant mechanism for the
formation of maze caves (see Section 4.3 for discussion of
the maze caves controversy).
Figure 43. Amazing Maze Cave, Texas, USA, a multi-story maze cave in stratified Cretaceous limestone, an example of confined transverse
speleogenesis in which dissolution by sulfuric acid took part (see text). Map courtesy of the Texas Speleological Survey (from Elliott and
Veni, 1994).
The renowned Caverns of Sonora, located in the
central portion of the Edwards Plateau within the drainage
basin of the Devils River, is another instructive example of
hypogenic transverse speleogenesis. The 2.3-km long
cave consists of mazy stacks of nearly parallel jointcontrolled
passages stretching along two main trends
(Figure 44), developed on four distinct stratigraphicallyconformable
stories within the vertical range of about 35 m