Miao Room is the largest known

cave Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's Planetary surface, surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance undergrou ...

chamber by volume in the world. It is a part of the Gebihe cave system, which is located in Ziyun Getu He National Park in

Ziyun county Ziyun Miao and Buyei Autonomous County (; Bouyei language, Bouyei: ) is a county in the southwest of Guizhou province, China. It is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Anshun. Administrative divisions Ziyun is divided into 3 ...

of the Chinese province of

Guizhou ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = , image_map = Guizhou in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_alt = Map showing the location of Guizhou Province , map_caption = Map s ...

. The chamber, discovered by a French expedition called Gebihe'89 in 1989, measures in length, in width, has an area of , and a volume of . In 2013, members of a British led expedition measured the chamber using 3-D laser scanners.

Geology and formation

For more than 600 million years, the area in which the Gebihe cave system is located was covered by sea, and during this time it accumulated miles-thick layers of sediments, including

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

. The uplift of the area and then the erosion of the limestone layer created today's massive cavern system. The system spreads out in limestones and dolomite of

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...

and

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years, from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.902 Mya. It is the s ...

age. Old cave levels have been cut by erosion and follow the base level lowering caused by

Tertiary Tertiary (from Latin, meaning 'third' or 'of the third degree/order..') may refer to: * Tertiary period, an obsolete geologic period spanning from 66 to 2.6 million years ago * Tertiary (chemistry), a term describing bonding patterns in organic ch ...

uplift.

References

Caves of Guizhou Limestone caves Wild caves {{Guizhou-geo-stub

Geology and formation

See also

References