The municipalities of Saint-Jean-de-Maruéjols, Saint-Privat-de-Champclos, Rochegude, Méjannes-le-Clap, Tharaux, offer speleology enthusiasts an incredible wealth of caves. Alain Borie, well known in the town, is one of the cavers who regularly survey all the woods of this territory with his friends Jacky, Jacqueline, Jean-François, Joël.
In 2021, Alain had spotted a small hole, likely to lead to a cave. During five or six outings, the small team had scraped and removed stones. Alain had felt currents of hot air, it was winter, that meant that a cave was indeed there. Happy as children, in February, at dusk, Jacqueline and Jacky offered to come and eat pancakes at their house to celebrate the discovery of a new cave, hence the name of the cave Le Crêpe Uscule.
In May 2021, the band premiered. They are all inventors, that is to say cavers who are the first to enter a new cave. Ten meters of horizontal hose descending, and there they are facing a large room 40 m by 20, 5 to 6 m high with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites, concretions; it is blocked by a collapsed part. In the middle of this space, a wonderful discovery: a reindeer skull with a jaw and antlers from 80 cm to 1 m, all very well preserved. The head was placed on its antlers, not in the clay which would have damaged them, this material being very corrosive.
Paleontologists will carry out analyzes
Several tracks explain how he ended up there in this position.
He may have fallen into a pit trap, or perhaps a group of reindeer chased by a lion or a bear, came to take refuge at the bottom of this cave and died there; indeed, other reindeer bones were found there. After the Würms glaciation, torrential rains fell, many caves were blocked. “Le Crêpe’Uscule” is the name of this cave.
In January 2022, archaeologists entered; seeing the teeth, the antlers, they immediately declared that it was a young female reindeer of 2 or 3 years old who lived 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. It was necessary to protect everything well to get it out of there, to enlarge the entrance. This female was entrusted to the Paleontologist of the Musée d’Orgnac, a specialist in deer, where very precise analyzes will be made. Already, Orgnac and the regional archeology service have made an excavation on the site, have taken many photos to put the discovered object in three dimensions, so it can be measured more precisely (photogrammetry).
An exceptional discovery given the preservation, perhaps even unique in France.
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