Ghar Dalam Cave

Ghar Dalam, meaning Cave of Darkness, is a 144-metre-long phreatic tube near Birzebbuga in southern Malta. Its sediment layers contain fossilised bones of animals that inhabited Malta during the Pleistocene and Holocene, including dwarf elephants, hippopotamuses and red deer isolated when rising sea levels separated Malta from Sicily. The cave gives its name to the earliest phase of human settlement in the Maltese Islands. An adjacent museum displays the most significant fossil finds from the site.