The herpetofauna of the Lost World

The Lost World is so known after the famous novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where in the summit of one of the Table Mountains several dinosaurs survived. These Table Mountains or tepuis are located in southern Venezuela, and are the most ancient mountains in the world, dating from 3000 to 1800 million years. Its isolation made them great places to study biogeography. Since they are deep in the jungle and difficult to access only a few expeditions have been made so far to only some of these tepuis, but all resulted in astonishing discoveries of new species, genera and even families. Herein we will virtually visit some of these magnificent mountains and will especially focus on its astonishing herpetofauna.

César L. Barrio Amorós is a Catalan anthropologist and herpetologist, with a wide experience array in the Neotropics, where he lives since 1995. He has published more than 200 articles and described 50 new species of amphibians and reptiles. He is one of the few scientists who explored herpetologically the Venezuelan tepuis and he was part of the explorers’ team led by Charles Brewer Carías, and as such he was a co-discoverer of the largest sandstone cave system of the World.