bedding-plane cave

   1. Bedding planes are widespread and very significant features within most carbonate rocks, and cave passages are commonly guided by them. Their structure, their distribution and the chemical contrasts that some bedding planes provide may be the major influence during the earliest phases of development of a cave system. The term bedding-plane cave is strictly applied to a passage that has not enlarged by growth into a major tube or canyon, but has remained almost entirely on the bedding plane. A famous example is Hensler’s Passage, in Gaping Gill, Yorkshire, which is over 400 m long, nearly over 5 m wide and nowhere higher than 1 m [9].

   2. A passage formed along a bedding plane, especially when there is a difference in susceptibility to corrosion in the two beds [10].

   3. A cave whose location is controlled by the bedding of the enclosing formation or formations [20].

   Synonyms: (French.) grotte de stratification; (German.) schichtgebundene Höhle; (Greek.) strosigenes speleon; (Italian.) grotta di interstrato; (Russian.) pescera v ploakosti naplastovanija; (Spanish.) cueva adaptada a planos de estratificación; (Turkish.) tabakalanma ma™aras2; (Yugoslavian.) slojna peƒina.