"where the Ice Age meets the Space Age"

In a cave discovered five years ago, when construction workers trying to make a road blasted open an entrance to the 800,000-to-1 million-year-old cavern.

"It's a unique combination of traces and the quality of preservation that makes it such a phenomenal site," McDonald said. "It's probably going to become a major reference site that will help us better understand the remains we have at other sites."

If research confirms that fossilized dung in the bear beds is from the short-faced bear, it would be a first and could provide real clues about what the bears ate, McDonald said.

The cave remains closed to the public to preserve its remains.

But with the help of the Springfield-Greene County library system and Ozarks Technical Community College, Forir installed a fiber-optic network that lets him broadcast pictures from the cave for school classes and the public.

It's called the Ozark Highlands Grotto.