Four New National Natural Landmarks Designated

Four new sites – Nottingham Park Serpentine Barrens, Cave Without a Name, Big Bone Lick, and Chazy Fossil Reef – are the newest additions to the National Natural Landmarks Program.

Each of these sites has been identified, evaluated, and designated through a rigorous process that formally acknowledges their nationally significant biological or geological features.

Nottingham Park Serpentine Barrens in Chester County, Pennsylvania, is an outstanding example of the serpentine barren ecosystem within the Piedmont region. This extraordinary site supports shallow soils that are high in metals toxic to many plant species, which has resulted in unique vegetation communities, including grasslands and open savannah that contain numerous rare and endemic species. The site also has one of the state’s largest stands of pitch pine forest.

Cave Without a Name in Kendall County, Texas, is significant for some of the largest and best examples of speleothems in the Edwards Plateau region. Blue speleothems found in the cave are exceedingly rare nationally. The cave also contains important fauna and significant paleontological deposits.

The Big Bone Lick site in Boone County, Kentucky, is significant for its combination of salt springs and associated late Pleistocene bone beds.  Many types of animals, especially large herbivores, were attracted to the springs for salt, and became mired in the mud.  The site became a burial ground over time.  Layers of disarticulated bones have been uncovered to depths of 30 feet. The site has been referred to as a major New World fossil locality, and plays an important role in the development of scientific thought on the concept of extinction and the relationship of geology/paleontology. 

The Chazy Fossil Reef in Grand Isle County, Vermont, and Clinton County, New York, contains surface exposures of an Ordovician fossil reef. The reef recounts the tropical, marine environment that existed approximately 450 million years ago on the continental shelf of North America. This paleontological treasure represents the oldest known occurrence of a biologically diverse fossil reef in the world, the earliest appearance of fossil coral in a reef environment, and the first documented example of the ecological principle of faunal succession.

Since 1962, the National Natural Landmarks Program has supported the cooperative conservation of important natural areas on private, state, municipal, and Federal land. NNL designation does not dictate activity or change ownership of an area, and all new NNL designations must have landowner permission. There are currently 586 designated sites. Only six new landmark designations have occurred during the last 20 years.

A complete list of National Natural Landmarks and additional information about the program can be found at www.nature.nps.gov/nnl/.