In northeastern South America lies a vast geological formation known as the Guiana Shield, a 1.7 billion-year-old expanse of rock. Once a plateau of sedimentary rock, much of this area has now been eroded.
The remains of these ancient plateaus are enormous, flat-topped sandstone blocks. The local Pemon people call them tepuis , meaning "dwellings of the gods," and there are hundreds of them.
Most tepuis are scattered throughout Venezuela, but they also extend into neighboring Guyana and Brazil. Along with the Andes, these tabletop-shaped mountains are among the highest landforms in South America.
There is Mount Roraima, the inspiration
for Arthur Conan Doyle's book
The Lost World :
Auyán-tepui, home to the world's highest waterfall:
Cerro Autana, a mountain pierced by caves, with openings on both sides:
Sarisariñama, whose surface is dotted with several
large
sinkholes :
And more. Towering above forests and savannahs, surrounded by sheer cliffs on all sides, tepuis are like isolated, inaccessible islands in the middle of the sea; they are effectively islands in space. And, like islands in the middle of the sea, they harbor a unique set of wildlife that evolved in a vacuum, separate from the "mainland."
Before I introduce you to the flora and fauna that inhabit these mountains, I'll take you through some of the most interesting characteristics that make this such a unique environment. Most tepuis are surrounded on all sides by vertical cliff faces.
At the summit, the terrain is varied, but you'll often encounter otherworldly rock formations known as stone forests. Here, some elements of the rock have eroded, forming complex, spiraling pillars.
Sometimes, the hollowed-out depression fills with water, which is then colonized by colorful algae.