"I thought it was great that we discovered something about someone who lived so long ago," said Edith Casimir, 16, one of the students who participated in the expeditions.
The findings also have excited the professional scientific community.
"The site may hold the answer to the antiquity of man in the eastern portion of the United States," said James Richardson, director of anthropology for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
Pottstown archaeologist Harry Tucci, who accompanied the students on five of their six expeditions to the cave, said recently that archaeologists and historians believed that humans began occupying Pennsylvania about 10,000 years ago.
However, he said, tests on the bones found in the cave have indicated that the ancestors of modern humans inhabited the state as early as 35,000 years ago, possibly during the ice age, periods of time when glacial ice covered large areas of the earth's surface.
"At first we just thought we had found some animal bones," said Terry Burlingame, a science teacher at the Upattinas School and coordinator of the expeditions. "But when we started putting the pieces together, we found we had discovered a human skull."
After working with anthropologists from the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University, Burlingame said, it was concluded that the students had discovered the bones of as many as six individuals.
The remains are thought to be those of a young girl, possibly a teenager; a mature woman; a child of about 3; two young adults and an adolescent.
In studying the bones, Tucci said, it is evident that the older woman was at least 65 years old and a little taller than 5 feet, 4 inches.
What is most unusual about her, he said, is that her leg bones show evidence of rheumatoid arthritis. He said this was one of the earliest examples of the ailment ever found.
