Giant Sinkhole in China

This giant karst sinkhole, also called a tiankeng, has plants growing at the bottom in Luoquanyan Village of Xuan'en County, central China's Hubei Province. This is not the sinkhole discovered in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Image credit: Song Wen/Xinhua/Alamy Live News)

A team of Chinese scientists has discovered a giant new sinkhole with a forest at its bottom.


The sinkhole is 630 feet (192 meters) deep, according to the Xinhua news agency, deep enough to just swallow St. Louis' Gateway Arch. 

A team of speleologists and spelunkers rappelled into the sinkhole on Friday (May 6), discovering that there are three cave entrances in the chasm, as well as ancient trees 131 feet (40 m) tall, stretching their branches toward the sunlight that filters through the sinkhole entrance.


"This is cool news," said George Veni, the executive director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute (NCKRI) in the U.S., and an international expert on caves. 

Veni was not involved in the exploration of the cave, but the organization that was, the Institute of Karst Geology of the China Geological Survey, is NCKRI's sister institute.  READ MORE...

Yemen's Well of Hell

Cave explorers from Oman have become the first individuals to descend to the bottom of the 367-foot (112 meters) deep "Well of Hell" sinkhole in Yemen, which many local people believe is a genie-infested gateway to the underworld, according to news reports.

The natural sinkhole, officially known as the Well of Barhout, has an eerily circular entrance that spans 98 feet (30 m) in diameter and is located in the middle of the desert in al-Mahra province in eastern 

Yemen, close to the border with Oman. Amateur cave explorers have entered the sinkhole before, but until now nobody was known to have made it all the way to the bottom.

Last week, a team of 10 explorers from the Omani Caves Exploration Team (OCET) explored the Well of Barhout using a pulley system that lowered eight of the members to the bottom while the remaining two stayed at the top. 

A small crowd of intrepid spectators gathered to watch the event, despite local fears surrounding the sinkhole. A video of the explorers descending into the cave was shared by the BBC.  READ MORE