Everard Im Thurn - the first explorer to reach the summit of the lost world - described the landscape he discovered as “some strange country of nightmares”, because the flat upper surface of Mount Roraima had been sculpted into an extraordinary wasteland of twisted stone adorned intermittently with pools of standing water, sediment floored drainage channels or pockets of low-growing vegetation and valleys lined with sparkling quartz crystals. This ancient landscape has remained little changed for millions of years.
The prominent rock formations of the tepuis are diverse and complex, and often bizarre and intricate. Towering rock arches, immense mushroom-shaped masses, and gigantic columns — sometimes many meters tall and often supported on thin, narrow bases — are among the rock features that make up the diverse landscapes of the surfaces of the tepuis. On many of the lost worlds, gigantic mazes of rock pinnacles continue across the summits for kilometres, forming huge labyrinths of stone! Often the rock labyrinths are criss-crossed with ravines, so their exploration is both difficult and slow. As a result, most remain little explored, and haunted with the beliefs of local Pemon Amerindians who regard the plateau summits as the lands of the god and spirits. As many of the rock formations may resemble shapes, animals and even faces, it is easy to understand this revered spirituality!
December 14th, 2009 marks the 125th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Roraima - South America's lost world - a colossal plateau skirted on all sides by sheer vertical cliffs up to 600 meters tall. The summit of the mountain has remained isolated for millions of years, and today is home to one of the greatest concentration of unique plants and animals found anywhere on Earth, including ancient living fossils that have remained little-changed since the time of the dinosaurs.
Ever since 1838, expedition after expedition reached the base of the towering plateau, but all failed to find a way up the towering cliff sides to the lofty mountain summit. Just after all hope had been abandoned, the chance discovery of a remote ledge in the towering cliffsides allowed one last effort to be conquer the might mountain and discover the lost world.
On December 14th, 1884, Everard Im Thurn battled up the ledge and finally reach the summit, stepping into a land that had never before been seen by mankind. Unlike other colonial expeditions, for example, to the Amazon, Im Thurn didn’t just discover a few species along his journey. Rather, when he reached the summit of Roraima, it was as if he stepped onto another planet – practically everything he saw as new to science, and he returned with hundreds of plant and animal specimens representing a wealth of new discoveries! Still today, this extraordinary land remains little known!
Blog Entry Seven: The Tallest Cascades on Earth
Written by Administrator
No part of Earth has more, high waterfalls than Guiana! Once one has seen one or some of the larger tepuis, one also will have seen the signature waterfalls descending from their summits, sometimes falling hundreds of meters without obstruction.
What might be the most magnificent and famous of all the waterfalls of the Guiana Highlands, and perhaps the best known of the region’s natural features, was discovered by American bush pilot Jimmie Angel on 14 November 1933. Whilst flying over Auyán Tepui, a great tableland massif in the north of Guiana, Angel observed an immense plume of water that cascaded over the side of the plateau “directly from the sky”. Angel estimated the cataract to be one mile in height. Few believed his accounts of the waterfall, but in 1949 an expedition to the site undertaken by the National Geographic Society determined the waterfall to be 979 meters (about 3212 feet) high, the tallest waterfall in the world. The falls was later named Angel Falls in Jimmie’s honour.
As the great tablelands of Guiana were uplifted 70 million years ago, huge veins of igneous intrusions penetrated the ancient sandstone fabric of the mountains and solidified as dykes and sills of pure quartz. Over millions of years, these intrusions have eroded and deposited gigantic drifts of quartz crystals on top of the plateaus. One of the largest and most spectacular of all is located on Mount Roraima, where banks of sparkling white and pink quartz crystals carpet a narrow gorge in the north of the plateau known by local Amerindian tourist guides as the ‘Valley of the Crystals’. The quartz here is so plentiful that crystals form drifts that resemble shimmering white beaches amidst the otherwise blackened rocky landscape.
Years ago, huge bunches of large crystals could be found, looking like exotic flowers. Unfortunately, tourists have increasingly plundered the crystal deposits. Although Roraima is still carpeted with crystals, the largest crystal clusters from the Valley of the Crystals have disappeared. Helping protect Roraima’s incredible crystal formations is one of the conservation priorities the Lost World Project seeks to achieve, so that this spectacular natural wonder may be protected and enjoyed for all time.
Blog Entry Five: New discoveries: carnivorous pitcher plants
Written by Administrator
The lost worlds are among the wettest places on earth. Rainfall falls almost every day – over 11,000 mm annually – and scours the summits of the plateaus of sediment and nutrients, giving rise to a barren and dramatic rocky landscape, ecologically crippled by the impoverished soil. In this strange, co-called “rain desert” ecosystem, a several families have responded to the lack of available nutrients by breaking the regular structure of the food chain and actively preying on animals.
The largest and most spectacular of these carnivorous plants are the pitcher plants – Heliamphora. These strange plants produce tall, tubular, hollow, cup shaped foliage adapted to trapping insect prey, and most species are found on just one or two individual plateaus, and occur nowhere else on earth!
The pitcher plants attract animal prey by their vibrant colouration and profuse secretions of sweet nectar. Most pitcher plants have a sweet fragrance and flying insects in particular find this sweet lure irresistible. But in their efforts to reach the nectar, animal prey is forced to scale the waxy, slippery interior surface of the leaf, and slips down into the depths of the trap and into the digestive liquid contained within. In many species, long, downward pointing spines prevent trapped prey from climbing up the inside of the trap, and the victims drown and are digested in the plants’ leaves!
We are only beginning to understand the diversity of the pitcher plants of the lost worlds. Since in many cases, each species of pitcher plant is found on just one plateau, and nowhere else, ongoing exploration is revealing more and more new species of these incredible carnivorous plants. Just this year, three more species (Heliamphora ciliata, H. huberi and H. uncinata) have been named, and no doubt lots more await discovery!
In the shadow of the great tablelands, near a remote Amerindian community in the lowlands of the Gran Sabana region of Venezuela, a small stream flows through a secluded vale. The bedrock of this creek is pure jasper, a semiprecious stone used around the world for jewellery and ornaments. The Pemón traditionally use the jasper as striking stones to create sparks to start fires and appropriately their name for this vale is Kako Paru, (Firestone Creek). Usually jasper occurs only in relatively small deposits, but in the Guiana Highlands, the intrusions of magma into the sedimentary bedrock have led to the formation of immense slabs of the stone that sometimes are hundreds of meters long. In the most spectacular of all the jasper creeks, a small stream flows over a succession of low cascades which display different coloured layers of crimson, scarlet and orange jasper. In flat areas of the stream the water has carved parallel grooves and channels in the surface of the jasper bedrock and in the shelter of the grooves, black algae grow and form peculiar black strips which give the bedrock a striped appearance similar to tiger skin.
The true brilliance of the jasper is apparent only when sunlight shines directly on wet stone. When sunlight shines on the Firestone Creek, the magnificence of the cascades is revealed and the bedrock glows crimson and orange.
Many small streams throughout the Guiana Highlands cascade over layers of jasper or red hematite, but the Firestone Creek exposure of jasper is the largest and most spectacular of all.
Blog Entry Three: Interview with Stewart McPherson – leader of the LWP expedition
Written by Administrator
How did you first hear of Mount Roraima and the Guiana Highlands?
I have always been interested in carnivorous pitcher plants, and one group, the marsh pitcher plants (Heliamphora), are found almost exclusively from the surfaces of the plateau summits, and nowhere else in the world, and so knew that a series of gigantic and mysterious table of unique life lie scattered across the north of South America. Also, like many people, I had heard the story of Arthur Conan Doyle’s acclaimed novel The Lost Worlds – the adventure classic of a Victorian expedition to discover an isolated land of dinosaurs, on top of a gigantic plateau in South America.
But, in 2002, whilst undertaking a rainforest conservation project in Belize, Central America, I was on a remote island off the coast, and in a coffee shop there, I happened to pick up an old copy of National Geographic magazine. It was a copy from June 1989, and inside was an article called Islands in Time by an excellent German naturalist Uwe George. This article has many spectacular photos of the lost worlds, and took my breath away. I knew instantly that one day I would have to visit for myself, and so began preparing to write five books on the ecology and diversity of wildlife on the plateau summits. One of these books, Lost Worlds of the Guiana Highlands, focuses particularly on the incredible story of the discovery of these great tablelands, their biogeography, and often incredible wildlife.
I have been fortunate to work with many botanists and zoologists from Europe and Venezuela in continuing studies of the wildlife of these incredible places, and have been lucky to visit many of the lost worlds to study the wildlife of the mountain summits.
What do you find most interesting about Mount Roraima and the “lost worlds”
There is so much that is incredible about these mountains, and indeed, the whole region.
Firstly, they are simply some of the most spectacular, unusual and striking places on earth – gigantic, sheer sided plateaus that rise above the savannahs and rainforests of the lowlands and soar into the clouds above. In every respect, these mountains are extraordinary. From the lowlands, the stand as pillars, dominating the horizon. From the air, the tower above the clouds, often surrounded by a sea of white. From the summits, the plateau continue as chains, off into the distance, looming on the horizon. They are home to many of the most unearthly landscapes on the planet – landscapes covered with sparkling quartz crystals, valleys of pure, semi-precious jasper gemstone, and labyrinth mazes of towering stone pinnacles and arches. There is simply on where else like the “lost worlds” on earth.
Second, in terms of their wildlife, they are among South Americas most important biogeographic provinces. The extremely high rates of plant and animal endemism (the rates of unique life) is extraordinary. Between 35-70% of the wildlife of the plateau summits is found only there and nowhere else on earth. And equally, it is not only the diversity of wildlife found here, but also the fact that in some cases, ancient living fossils have persisted here, practically unchanged for millions of years, having died out in the rest of the world long ago. Even though, unlike Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, there are no dinosaurs, the wildlife really makes these extraordinary plateaus stand out.
There really is no where else on earth quite like these so-called "lost worlds".
What will the Lost World Project expedition be like?
The climb up Mount Roraima is widely regarded as one of the most spectacular in South America. The ten winners of the Lost World Project will come on a locally guided journey up to the great plateau, and observe first hand the incredible and spectacular scenery, and also the threats which the mountain faces.
The climb is not technical. No climbing experience is required at all. Although the mountain looks so unscalable, and for nearly two centuries none of the early explorers could reach the summit - the reality is, that when the ledge up the towering vertical cliffsides was eventually discovered, the journey up to the lost world was relatively easy. You literally walk the whole way up. There is no difficult climbing or rope work - it is just a walk to the summit, in the setting of one of the most beautiful and unique landscapes on earth.
For those that would like to take part, the professional camera crew (which includes BBC Planet Earth cameramen), will train participants interested in wildlife filming, with the goal that each participant can shoot material with the help of the camera crew. To fully understand and document the conservation issues of the mountain. However, those not interested in filming can opt out of this, and simply enjoy the journey as an adventure to observe and understand the unique ecology and landscapes of the lost world. y.c
Blog Entry Two: New Species of the Lost Worlds
Written by Administrator
The “lost worlds” of Mount Roraima and the Guiana Highlands harbour the greatest concentrations of endemic life of any major mountain range on the planet. We are still only beginning to understand the full diversity of wildlife found in this ultra-biodiverse region of South America. This month, three new spectacular species of carnivorous pitcher plants have been described from the tablelands of Venezuela (Heliamphora ciliata, H. huberi and H. uncinata). All three of these spectacular plants produce “pitcher” leaves up to 30 cm tall, which catch, kill and digest insects and other small animals! The majority of the 18 known species of carnivorous pitcher plants from the lost world have been discovered and named only in the last few years, and doubtless many more remain discovery!
Many new and little known animal species are continually found too. Last year, a spectacular, primitive lizard, with black skin and yellow spots was discovered or re-discovered. This animal, called Riolama leucosticta, has only ever been seen on once before, when it was first found! Riolama leucosticta shows traits similar to reptiles found in other ex-Gondwana continents, and appears to be another “living fossil” that has persisted little changed, in isolation on top of the great tablelands, separated from the rest of the world! Check back next week for a detailed post on other ancient living fossils of the lost worlds!
125 years ago, British explorer Everard Im Thurn finally succeeded in reaching the summit of Mount Roraima. For two hundred and fifty years earlier, every explorer to reach the enigmatic plateau had proclaimed it unscalable, and forever beyond the reach of mankind. Nineteenth century botanists, zoologists and naturalists had wondered what secrets the remote mountain top might harbour. Victorians seriously suggested it might be a refuge for dinosaurs, prehistoric life or even undiscovered human civilisations. Yet, all efforts to conquer the mountain had failed... until 1884.
After just a few hours on top of Mount Roraima, Everard Im Thurn and his companion Harry Perkins declared “no district of equally small size has yielded greater botanical results”. Practically all of the plant life he encountered was new to science - it was as if he had stepped into another world. In reality, the summit of Roraima had never been seen or explored by mankind, and the process of cataloguing the wildlife of the “lost worlds” is very much a continuing process. Every year, dozens of new animals and plants are discovered, this month, three new species of new carnivorous pitcher plants were found on remote plateaus in the Guiana Highlands (Heliamphora ciliata, H. huberii and H. uncinata. Yet this fragile, ancient land is under threat from the introduction of foreign species, mining and increased accessibility.
The Lost World Project aims to support efforts to make Mount Roraima a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to help secure a safe future for the ancient wildlife and landscapes of this unique plateau and ensure that it will always have a safe place in our world. This is the first of a weekly blog that will be posted here, on the Ibex Earth Website, to provide information about Mount Roraima, updates on The Lost World Project competition, and fundraising, seminar and events news! Check back regularly. Also follow us on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter!
