Besora Cave, the Besor Dike
- Grid ref.
- 123623/037117
- Location
- Nahal HaBesor
Cave mapView the map (PDF)Description of the Cave:
Besora Cave is a small cave consisting mainly of a short two-level passage. The cave was discovered by Mika Ullman, during a partial survey of spaces carried out at the site by the ICRC team (Mika Ullman, Shemesh Yaran, Yotam Zisu, Yuval Sobolev, Boaz Langford).
The cave has a small entrance (0.7X0.4 m) opening at the bottom of the cliff of the Shivta Formation. This formation builds the watersheds at the top of the channel banks and looks like a massive cliff gnawed by spaces. From the entrance a narrow passage extends northeast, with smoothed walls and dissolution domes opening in its ceiling. On the walls there are thin gypsum coatings as well as a few salt flowers. The passage floor is covered with loose soil and gravel, mixed with guano and porcupine quills. A through shaft in the inner part of the passage leads to the lower level of the cave.
At the base of the shaft there are calcite deposits including mainly a thin, long elephant ear made of dark brown crystalline calcite. A short continuation of the entrance passage, on the other side of the shaft, consists of an impressive dissolution dome on which there is a stain of bat fat and urine. Such stains appear in other parts of the cave, so it seems that a bat population roosts at the site in one of the seasons (during the visit a single unidentified insectivorous bat was observed).
The lower level of the cave consists of a passage extending along the same axis as the entrance passage but in the opposite direction (to the southeast).
This passage too has smoothed walls and dissolution domes open in its ceiling. A gypsum and/or calcite coating covers almost completely the walls and ceiling of the passage. The floor is covered with stones and rocks of various sizes and with loose soil with a little guano.
Written by: Boaz Langford
Elevation: +439
