Inside the lost cave world of the Amazon’s tepui mountains
They are vast towers rising out of the jungles of the Amazon basin.
Tepuis, rocky tabletop mountains isolated by hundreds of metres of steep cliffs, form a unique habitat on their tops and inside their maze of caves. Untouched for millions of years, they host a secret world that has evolved in parallel with its surroundings.
Now, the secrets of the ancient tepui are slowly being revealed, thanks to expeditions led by speleologistFrancesco Sauro of the University of Bologna, Italy.
Earlier this month, his team finished an arduous, 40-day expedition to some of the world’s last unexplored caves inside inaccessible tepuis. His team explored Imawarì Yeuta in Venezuela, which has at least 22 kilometres of tunnels, the largest known cave system of its kind.
Read more at New Scientist, here.