Tenglong is apparently the “longest monomer karst cave in the world”. What does “monomer” mean in this context? It appears to be a nonce usage by the article. From etymology it would appear that “monomer” might refer to the fact it is in one “piece” but how does that differ from Mammoth?
I don’t really know, but my guess is that it has something to do with the break down products of the initial reaction between carbonic acid and calcium carbonate. Maybe by ‘monomer’ they mean to imply that only one ultimate breakdown product dominates, but not knowing the chemistry, that’s just a guess.
My guess is that it is a misunderstanding of the usage of the word monomer. Looking at its roots it could simply mean “one name”. In that case I think the author is trying to claim that cave is the largest karst cave that goes by a single name. I don know enough about cave systems to know if that claim could be considered accurate. But I think the use of “monomer” in this case is just poor word choice.
It definitely has to do with Tenglong being a karst cave. I found a reference to monomeric acid on a site devoted to speliogenesis, but I couldn’t make heads nor tales of what it meant. Anyhoo, here’s the site.
Retired myself from geology for more than 19 years now. I never encountered the term but from freckafree’s link, ‘monomer’ is used in a similar way in chemistry, meaning a molecule that may chemically bind with another to form a polymer. In geology, the term simply explains the dissolution of the host rock to form undergound solution channels, which then give rise to a Karst topography (caves, sinkholes, rounded hills, etc.)
So the term monomer Karst cave appears redundant. There’s only one way to form a Karst environment and that is through dissolution of the rock by groundwater, whether of calcite, gypsum, dolomite, quartzite and (sometimes) granite.