Conkling Cavern

Conkling Cavern is a paleontological and archaeological site located in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. It is part of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. It was excavated in the late 1920s under the direction of Chester Stock. Unfortunately, Stock never published the fossil fauna from the excavations. Instead, R. P. Conkling, who had drawn scientific attention to the site, published very preliminary lists of mammals identified by Stock and birds identified by Howard. Several authors have done research on portions of the recovered fossil fauna. Excavated before modern dating techniques were developed, little is known about the chronology except some apparently is Holocene and much is Pleistocene in age. The site is located on the east side of Bishop's Cap, an outlier of the Organ Mountains. The entrance to the cavern is essentially vertical. The cave was described by Conkling as having been filled originally to 8 feet below the entrance. A vertical section of the cave is pictured in the Conkling paper from a photograph of an exhibit that had been displayed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The Conkling Cavern material was deposited at that museum. Some additional material has since been recovered from spoil from the original excavations and is housed in the Paleobiology Collection, UTEP Biodiversity Collections, Department of Biolo

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