What’s Up and What’s Down in the Tabon Caves?
Aside from being a storehouse of prehistoric life and culture, the Tabon Cave Complex is also home to some unusual wildlife. It is also adorned with spectacular cave formations known as speleothems. They can be very fragile and easy for people to damage.
So always remember to take nothing but litter, and leave nothing but a cleaner cave when you visit. Here are some of the speleothems that you can find when you journey into the depths of the “Cradle of Philippine Civilization.”
Rimstone dams
Rimstone dams are cave deposits that resemble Stairs on the cave floor. They form when calcite-rich water flows downward on a slope, forming a thin layer of deposit that builds up over time.
Cave popcorns
Cave popcorns, also known as corraloids, are knobby, nodular, botryoidal, or coral-like speleothems forming in clusters. They range in size and can grow on the cave floor or the surface of other speleothems.
Flowstones
Flowstones are formed when a film of water regularly flows along floors or down sloping walls, building up layers of calcite or other cave minerals. They are admired for their intricate beauty.
Helictites
Helictites are contorted speleothems that grow in random directions. They usually sprout up in other speleothems where water rich in calcite leaks out of microscopic cracks.
Draperies
Draperies also called “cave bacon,” are formed when water flows down a slanted ceiling before dripping to the floor, leaving behind thin trails of calcite. These trails of calcite. These trails become pathways for the ongoing flow and gradually form curtain-like features.
Soda straws
Soda straws represent the first stage of stalactite formation. They are hollow, and elongated, with diameters equal to the water droplets that form them. They are also the most delicate of all cave deposits.
Anemolites
Anemolites are stalactites that curve along their length because of air currents.
Columns
Columns are formed when stalactites and stalagmites meet. The larger ones are around ceiling joints where the most water drips into the cave.
Stalagmites
Stalagmites grow up from the cave floors. Water containing the minerals for their growth drips from the stalactites above and splashes onto the cave floors. As a result, stalagmites are more massive, with rounded or flat tops.
Stalactites
Stalactites are icicle or carrot-shaped deposits that grow down from the ceiling of caves. They form when water rich in minerals, mainly calcite, slowly drips through cracks. This process takes hundreds or even thousands of years
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