QUICK FACTS
Identify: Sistema Ox Bel Ha
Location: Quintana Roo, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico
Coordinates: 20.18507611995248, -87.49650948586978
Why it is unimaginable: This large submerged cave system is among the many longest on the earth and holds a variety of spectacular options and stays.
Sistema Ox Bel Ha, which means “three paths of water” within the native Mayan language, is a huge submerged labyrinth that runs for no less than 326 miles (524 kilometers) underground, in line with the Investigation Heart of the Aquifer System of Quintana Roo (CINDAQ). This makes it the longest submerged system and the second-longest cave system on the earth, after the 426-mile-long (686 km) Mammoth Caves in Kentucky.
The Yucatán Peninsula is house to a number of large cave programs as a result of it has a skinny layer of prime soil masking limestone, which is soluble, enabling rain water to rapidly go by into caverns under the floor, in line with a 2020 examine. That is additionally the explanation why the area has few rivers or streams.
The caverns kind by a course of known as karstification, through which rain water dissolves calcium carbonate from the limestone. Within the case of Ox Bel Ha, this course of is supercharged because the recent water meets salt water that is entered the system from the ocean.
The recent and salt water kind distinct layers and meet at some extent within the cave water known as the halocline. This line varies in Ox Bel Ha, various from 33 ft (10 meters) close to the coast, the place there may be extra salt water, to 66 ft (20 m) deep additional inland. CINDAQ estimated that 27% of the system is salt water and 73% recent water. This recent water feeds the huge Maya aquifer, which is the one supply of ingesting water within the area.
The karstification course of may cause cavern roofs to break down, creating an uncovered pool or sinkhole, often called a cenote. Ox Bel Ha has no less than 160 cenotes, and they’re vital water sources for animals and ecosystems, in line with CINDAQ. The group has just lately recorded a variety of species across the cenotes, corresponding to cougars (Puma concolor), jaguars (Panthera onca) and numerous deer and different animals.
The system additionally helps a spread of creatures under the floor. In 2018, scientists found that the subterranean system helps its ecosystem with methane. Methane kinds under the jungle flooring after which migrates down into the caves, the place microbes and micro organism eat it. These in flip turn into meals for cave-dwelling crustaceans in addition to a number of species of fish, together with an eyeless albino cave fish.
Ox Bel Ha runs close to the historic Maya city of Tulum. The traditional Maya believed that cenotes had been gateways to Xibalba, the Maya underworld, and these swimming pools, together with these of the close by Sistema Sac Actun, have yielded a variety of vital archaeological finds.
Most notably, researchers discovered the stays of a 25- to 30-year-old lady, named Eve of Naharon, whose stays might date to 13,700 years in the past — probably making these the oldest human stays discovered within the Americas. Nonetheless, a 2021 overview famous that this date has not been replicated or verified. Proof suggests the girl was intentionally positioned on the cave flooring, which wasn’t flooded at that time, though this additionally is not clear, a 2020 examine famous.
Ox Bel Ha’s system is below risk from building and developments, together with the Maya Prepare and Tulum Worldwide Airport, and it already runs below a variety of city areas, CINDAQ mentioned. This makes finding out and mapping the huge underwater system critically vital, CINDAQ added.
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