Cueva del Milodόn

Looking out from inside Cueva del Milodόn

With all the Geodynamics students finally in Patagonia, we traveled from Punta Arenas up to Puerto Natales. If Punta Arenas is the research hub of Patagonia, Puerto Natales is the outdoor adventure hub. There are hostels on pretty much every street corner, and plenty of people around town have giant backpacks to survive multiple days in the mountains. That's because Puerto Natales serves as the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park. 

Some of the more ambitious students took off on a hike in the park as soon as we arrived. Others explored a cave near town, and it is this latter destination that I want to highlight: la Cueva del Milodόn (Mylodon Cave). 

If you haven't seen a Mylodon before, that's understandable. They're extinct. Mylodons were giant ground sloths that lived in the southern part of South America, including Patagonia, in the late Pleistocene. They were massive - 3 or 4 m long, with body masses in the tons. Cueva del Milodόn, just outside of Puerto Natales, is so named because the cave held extremely well-preserved mylodon specimens, including skin and hair. Inside the cave, you can see potholes left by recent archaeological investigations. 

The Patagonian landscape, seen from the Mirador atop 
Cueva del Milodόn

Mylodon Cave itself is a relatively small cavern. Compared to a lot of caves I've explored, it was a simple divot in the rock. The main value in visiting Cueva del Milodόn is exploring, hiking, and learning about the area. 

A lot of the students on the Patagonia trip are in WHOI's Geology and Geophysics program. Their dissertations focus on topics like plate tectonics, glaciology, and paleoclimate reconstructions. I look at Mylodon Cave and see a fascinating extinct mammal. They look at the cave and see evidence of geological processes long past. 

After seeing the cave itself, you can hike up to a lookout point (Mirador in Spanish). Signage all along the hiking trail and especially at the Mirador highlights the impacts of the Last Glacial Maximum on the Patagonian landscape. At the end of the Pleistocene, the gigantic Patagonian Ice Sheet covered the region. As the ice receded, it scraped and scarred, dug and deposited its way across South America, leaving a landscape forever shaped by its influence. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field, which we would see later in Torres del Paine National Park, is the last remnant of that gigantic Patagonian Ice Sheet. 

I'm really glad the students got to see Mylodon Cave - it was a good learning experience for them.