Word: caving
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...commission immediately restored complete darkness and isolation for a recuperative period of three months. Instead of diminishing, however, the splotches only spread more rapidly. The French Government became so alarmed that in 1963 it closed off the cave to all but its own investigators. Preparing for the worst, it also ordered the national shrine photographed, so that the irreplaceable Paleolithic paintings would at least be preserved on film...
...French biologists refused to panic. Taking samples of the splotchy growth back to their lab near Paris, Biologists Marcel Lefevre and Guy Laporte found that they were teeming with microorganisms. Yet only one was multiplying massively enough to produce the ugly green discoloration on the cave walls. The culprit, the scientists report in the British journal Studies in Speleology, was a hardy, spherical alga called Palmellococcus...
...microscopic plant probably flourished in the cave in prehistoric times, but reappeared only when man brought it back with him in the mud and dirt of his shoes. Palmellococcus' life was made all the more comfortable when man installed artificial lights in the cave, circulated the air with huge blowers and, most important of all, introduced a host of algal nutrients...
...brought into the grotto-it will multiply well even in dim light. If enough of these nutrients are present, it can survive without any light at all. In fact, it was this steady buildup of organic matter, Lefevre and Laporte say, that enabled Palmellococcus to proliferate even when the cave was shut down and left in total darkness...
Maladie verte's rout has been so successful that scientists and other selected visitors are now again being allowed into the cave to study the paintings. If adequate protection against new contamination can be devised, Lefevre and Laporte hope that the public also may some day again be allowed to see the remarkable artistry of Cro-Magnon...