Research overview: Natural Trap Cave and its Ice Age carnivores

This overview describes Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, a deep sinkhole that acted as a pitfall for Pleistocene animals and accumulated a rich fossil assemblage including the American lion, the cheetah-like Miracinonyx, and abundant herbivores. Because animals fell into the cave and could not escape, the site preserves a relatively unbiased sample of the regional fauna over thousands of years, complementing the predator-skewed assemblages of asphalt seeps. The survey reviews the cave's stratified deposits, its value for radiocarbon-dated faunal sequences spanning the last glacial interval, and what its big-cat remains contribute to studies of Panthera atrox and Miracinonyx distribution, body size, and ecology. It highlights Natural Trap Cave as a key window onto Ice Age predator communities in the North American interior.