[Music] [Music] above the jungles of South America Towers the original Jurassic Park a Preserve of prehistoric Castaways marooned on an island in the clouds here Legend says the extinct still survived a story of three expeditions the first men to scale the mountain fictional Adventure they inspired and a modern team that breaks new ground so much over the top of your Rhema is still totally Uncharted undiscovered they'll meet the dangerous it is the most feared animal in the jungle the deadly if it doesn't kill you usually have to amputate and the unknown I've seen tarantulas all
over the world but I've never seen this one before they'll hunt for living fossils dinosaurs really are here seen anything like this and find life out of this world [Music] [Music] thank you it takes time to reach the land that time forgotten it soars a mile above the jungle it's rained by an obstacle course and it's not for climbing an early Explorer said you couldn't get there except by balloons rurima lies on the remote borders of Venezuela Guyana and Brazil [Music] four centuries after Columbus it remained a mystery no one had ever been to the
top not white men nor the local Indians they were afraid of it they had all kinds of strange Legends and stories about what kind of creatures might be up there including a strange violent race of eight men and flying pterodactyls what was the mystery of warima [Music] a British newspaper pleaded will no one explore rorima in 1884 the Royal Geographic Society tapped two British officials in Guyana to solve the mystery amateur botanist Everett intern and surveyor Harry Perkins they discovered an evolutionary cul-de-sac where life had gone its own way their story captivated a Man Who
Loved Mysteries the creator of Sherlock Holmes Conan Doyle devoured the tales The Strange Tales that were coming back from explorers in the late 19th century Tales not only of the Explorers but of the Indians and the indigenous peoples were telling them of eight men that lived deep in the jungle in caves we're telling them of giant snakes 60 and 100 feet long we're telling them a giant footprints in the swamps glimpses of dinosaur-like creatures flying reptiles and he just made that little leap of imagination okay let's say they're true the result was a page tournament
a lost world the first novel about dinosaurs it inspired King Kong and Jurassic Park but the real freaks of nature still lay in the Amazon to this day parts of oraima remain unexplored and secrets wait to be unlocked in the jungles of Venezuela an unprecedented Expedition sets out to reconcile Legend and science the team would make Hollywood proud snake expert a tarantula Authority a veteran caver cryptozoologist a biologist who studies life on other planets and their guide for me it's amazing that as we speak we are still finding new species and discovering and revealing new
Mysteries even with all our technology there's so many things to learn ahead a cross-section of terrain then the lost world of warima on the way they'll meet Giants killers and creeks their Journey will start in the marshlands of Northwestern Venezuela more than 400 miles from marima [Music] they're looking for primitive Lost World creatures tarantula expert Rick West is hot on the trail this is a centipede for sure I don't know what kind yet oh boy it's a monster oh holy smoke oh that's a big one that has got to be if it's what I think
it is I think that is the world's largest centipede older than the dinosaurs this foot long killer once grew eight feet long it has 42 legs two sharp pincers and Venom toxic enough to kill mice frogs even tarantulas foreign like needles but Rick holds tight to the business end poison has stopped people look at that dead in their tracks these get up to 14 inches in length and they've got a modified set of claws right there that are like fangs and the bite is extremely painful and the people are terrified locally they're absolutely terrified of
these things if they see them they run in the opposite direction uh it's gross from insects to reptiles biologist Seth Heald runs an outdoor adventure company in Arizona he's an expert on snakes as a kid I would spend every single day out in the swamps in Maritime Canada just searching for garter snakes Turtles salamanders anything I could get my hands on for me the Trek torima is a dream come true [Music] like the first explorers the snake Handler hopes to find species no one has ever seen foreign [Music] I've never seen one before these are
really rare that blends right in look at how these things yeah you want me to hold that no I think we got him here we just gotta wait for his tail to release which I think I can get them to do the boa is aggressive its bike isn't lethal but it's painful it uses two inch fangs to seize its favorite prey it crushes the bird then swallows it head first So It Goes Down Smooth that's full grown that's full grown they don't get much bigger than this oh I let them back off when he's coiled
like that you want to be careful because that's when they can strike a long ways it's rare but not new yet new life has been reported on rarima deep within a cave the report lured cavers Hazel Barton and Peter Sprouse to the expedition well we're probably going to keep my feet about half a meter apart they practice on a bridge built in the middle of the Jungle by the architect of the Eiffel Tower there's only two cavers along Hazel and I as soon as we get to the cave and the rest of the Expedition turns
us loose will be in our own environment for example go ahead and repel a little bit okay and I'm going to stop you Peter Sprouse has spent as much time Underground as above there are risky places there's no doubt about that I've been caving for 35 years and I'm still here presumably from being somewhat careful I've taken a few Falls broken a few bones had a few friends who were a little bit less lucky than that who are no longer with us Barton is one of the world's leading cave biologists but the lost world is
a new frontier the idea of coming to Venezuela and reading the last World book it seemed like something that was kind of a fantasy you know it would never be true you know it's a reality now is that we will be going to the top and we want to actually see these caves and see the formations that are in there we've got our upper ascender we've got our Cedar Cinder which is called a crawl we've got our stuff done a lot of conduit for new species in caves over my lifetime and I've found quite a
few new species the caves could be the key to finding really ancient life on Earth can't wait to see what's in there good you're a natural we know there are some animals that are unique to the tapui so the hope is that we'll find some microorganisms that have never previously been described new species of life [Music] in Martian jungle life has evolved much as it has in similar habitats but the farther they travel the stranger the life [Music] rarima is one of the oldest places on Earth some rock formations are over three and a half
billion years old more than half the age of the planet toe is the wreckage from a cataclysmic divorce 120 million years ago Africa and South America were part of a single continent called gondwana when they split rarima sprang up from the ocean floor an island a mile high rising from the jungle Explorer ever and M thurn suspected it was a prehistoric time capsule on the supposition that the Summit is really inaccessible to all unwinged animals very possibly animal forms of a primitive type exist which have undergone no modification since the plane was first isolated in
mid-air Fern was braced for anything [Music] [Music] after three days we reach a shallow River and our progress improves dramatically Miss Clooney um do you think that our piranha is Waters Chrono and dangerous oh that's a mess it's the snakes you have to watch [Music] like characters in The Lost World the Expedition continues their hunt for strange creatures in Venezuela's Marshals the real Lost World of warima is still 400 miles away but one Explorer believes its Legends are close by [Music] Dean Harrison is a cryptozoologist a specialist in animals undocumented by science with a bit
of luck we'll be able to get the images these creases exist you can't dismiss all the sightings of dinosaurs pterodactyls seropods that has gone on over the years you know what you don't need a couple of no one knows Lost World Legends like the locals they were born here actually Hannah was born Juan Carlos interviews a man meta monster when he was a child he was on a bus with his father on the main road and the bus had a stop because there was a huge snake on the road when they got off it was
three to four feet thick and came up to a man's hip the witnesses here seen just think I say this big but I said yeah exactly what they saw with his father on the road [Music] in the early 1900s British Explorer Percy Fawcett claimed to meet such a monster he said his boat was attacked by an anaconda 63 feet long it's incredible look at that hasn't came across something as big as that that is huge my interest in this area has been stemmed by the sightings of large and bizarre creatures which have been seen in
explorers journals over the years particularly the 18th and 19th century [Music] Victorian explorers roamed the planet they found strange worlds and stranger beasts Jungle Cats mountain gorillas pygmy hippos Komodo dragons each like a myth come true then the strangest beasts of all in the forests around London dinosaur bones were being found for the first time and this is before Darwin an evolution monsters had walked the Earth right here in our little villages [Music] in 1854 London opened the world's first dinosaur theme park for the first time Modern Man gazed on primeval Giants imaginations ran Wild
[Music] perhaps in the untrod Amazon the Giants lived on [Music] the globetrotting Percy Fawcett even claimed he saw one [Music] his Tails helped Inspire Conan Doyle's Lost World by 1912 the dinosaurs were old friends to the public but only from statues and paintings Doyle wanted to ask the question what would it really be like to meet a dinosaur in the flesh how terrifying how strange how magnificent an experience would that be [Music] in the Amazon contemporaries of the dinosaurs survive spectacle Cayman is 65 million years old it can grow eight feet long and weigh 500
pounds [Music] it has a 1500 pound bite [Music] fish Birds Turtles and mammals look at look at this over here look at this debris pile that looks like what the Caymans and the crocodiles make to lay their eggs in huh shouldn't everyone be one hanging around here though if the mother's lurking handling eggs is touchy almost like uh sandpaper that's hashed is it a Cayman or not it's hard like a bird's egg there's another one that's hatched in late summer Caymans lay eggs in damp Mounds after 90 days they hatch youngsters feed on small prey
under adult supervision night time is the best time to find a Cayman Beauty I don't let her bite this juvenile is less than two months old but it can still take off a finger geez is that the larger one I don't know they just better go let's call it a night Downstream Dean sets a trap to catch a lost world Legend on camera okay look over here you can see a large entry point where something massive has been coming in and out of the water but is it I'm not sure large Anaconda crocodile don't know
but hopefully I'll find out I plan to put the base here camera over here in the morning with a bit of luck we'll have some footage [Music] [Music] [Music] 14 hours later Dean checks his camera trap okay it looks like the bike's gone just be careful standing over here because the crocodile could launch out of here at any time there's a few prints around various different types so that's a good thing let's see what we've got the goal here is to get some footage of the giant anacondas and crocodiles we've heard so much about in
the Explorers journals caught on film a rare species of fox approximately 35 to 40 photos not a giant reptile that would explain dinosaur sightings I really believe in these Waters behind me hold the secrets to the native Legends maybe so and these Waters lurks a primeval monster one of the world's largest crocodiles it grows up to 23 feet long and weighs as much as a small car early explorers describe running a gauntlet of hundreds of Crocs in the 1930s they were slaughtered for their hides today fewer than 1500 survived before continuing toward arrival one last
search for a giant snake villagers spotted one in this swamp thank you anacondas sees prey in fangs like fishels then squeeze it to death the fangs face backward to make Escape hard as discovered by a Brazilian farmer who tried to move [Music] poisonous but can be infectious snake's mouth is a cesspool of germs anacondas are the world's biggest snakes but for 25 feet long and more than 500 pounds but they hide well okay guys this is the best spot to find the Anaconda we're gonna wait in following these tracks and see we we're lucky what
size Anaconda would we expect to find in here anything between two and eight meters well that's big yeah let's catch one let's go [Applause] I'm looking for his soft bottom and when you poke the snake actually you feel a lateral movement once you feel it you'll know it's Anaconda and you have to watch out for the head because it's a nasty bite the aggressive it could be very aggressive okay I think I think there's one can you see it yeah right there really thick we have to be careful and watch out for the head yeah
where is the head guys it's gonna be over there so be careful look how the scales are laying okay the head is this way well we don't know how long it is either the body's still going over there and it's moving the weeds over here okay it's moving oh there it is okay I need you to distract her from one side I'm gonna try to sneak up from behind you don't want to step on the tail okay this is by the size it looks like a female males don't grow it's big and it's pretty pretty
heavy and thick actually so probably we just ate something or oh wow it's very very powerful of muscle can you see the teeth under there yeah how long you think it is push it out let's say about 17 18 feet from its bow the snake may have just eaten one of its favorite meals the world's largest rodent the capybara the capybara eats aquatic plants grows up to 150 pounds and lives in groups up to a hundred it's such a local staple the Catholic church is classified as a fish so it can be eaten over Lent
the population has rebounded to a hundred thousand in Venezuela alone that's a heavy snake there is [Music] after two days in Venezuela's Northern Wetlands the team heads for a jungle Camp to the southeast gateway to the Lost World Dead Ahead hard proof of a lost world myth [Music] in Conan Doyle's fictional Lost World an expedition Bound for a mystical Mountain reaches the frontier of civilization the mission station which is our present destination will provide the last chance to savor the Comforts of the Civilized world beyond that lies the hardships and the Terrors of the unknown
the rorama Expedition has reached the camp in the Amazon along Venezuela's kuyuni River the edge of civilization and once we're left at the Grand Savannah area we'll be looking at 25 kilometers of really extreme hiking it's the terrain of a creature from Conan Doyle's Lost World [Music] there have been a lot of reported sightings of the DD or eight man which obviously includes the lawyers like in 1920 while searching for oil Swiss geologist Francois delois claimed he was attacked by a pair of Apes nearly five feet tall [Music] he shot one with his rifle then
his camera he left the body in the jungle [Music] all that survives is his controversial photo of what looks like a large ape but some say it's a trick shot of an average-sized spider monkey recently in Brazil cavers found the skull of an ancient spider monkey twice the size of its modern descendants did delois shoot a prehistoric holdout the jungle out here is that thick that anything can survive for its entire existence and never be discovered by man Dean is he's very serious about what he does science is not a belief system you don't ask
people to believe something you show them evidence and then they either accept it or reject it we actually shot these creature on the bank and uh brought it up it was a female I measured it out to be five feet Aaron and Perkins sought their own evidence natives brought local specimens and outlandish stories any extraordinary or inaccessible rock is always said to be inhabited by monstrous animals on rorimer the Indians say they're a huge white Jaguars huge white Eagles and other such beasts to this class probably belongs the deities being in shape something between men
and monkeys they were prepared and they hoped to find anything everything strange creatures they they wondered whether some of the great myths were true and whether some of these animals actually lived Seth is on firmer ground he follows rodent trails in search of a creature no one disputes the locals told me this Gallery Forest is full of rattlesnakes and I'd love to find one unfortunately it's also full of Bushmaster the largest Viper in the world and I hope I actually don't run into one of those [Music] he's just in time for an ambush oh you
got him as you just saw the rattlesnake just in venomated this little wood rat and the wood rat's almost dead already which shows you just how toxic this Venom is but pretty soon he'll be able to track this mouse down even in a forest like this with hundreds of cents around including the scent of other mice this snake will be able to track right directly to the mouse by its own signature scent when he envenomated it no one knows how they do it you know they'll always swallow them head first because the hair will lay
down and allow them to swallow them a hole now you see how he keeps jerking back and forth he's got to loosen his jaw unlike humans the jaw doesn't connect to the skull this area is a Rick and Hazel search for another venomous killer look at this look look at that here's one right here just just mentioning the tree tarantula this one lives in trees you see anything up oh I see some really big hairy legs yes all right do you want to get her over you can I'm more than happy to let you try
they find a tarantula with nearly half inch fangs named for its pink feet Rojo Pata can you see the silk that she's producing oh yeah it's so fun it's I mean it's like much thinner than a hair it's amazing she's beautiful and that's about full grown that's a female pink pink toes I have pink shoes so I have empathy for this animal There She Goes there she is let's go find more okay cool are there any snakes [Music] South go spend one more day searching for the roots of Lost World Legend [Music] a few miles
away the next leg of their Journey takes them deeper into the Venezuelan rainforest [Music] The Lost World a hundred miles Upstream from the mission we find the secret tributary along which Professor Challenger returned on his previous Journey his private gate into the unknown as he called it the drums that had worried us earlier have started again much closer now their Menace is reflected on the faces of our Indian bearers we are being watched I think I'm really looking forward to seeing the landscape from the photos I've seen it's about as alien in a world as
you can possibly get so I'll never be able to go to Mars but this might be the closest I get heading deeper into the Amazon toward the mystical mountains of the Lost World the Expedition enters hazardous currents the realm of the water dragon [Music] [Music] after five days the lost world team glimpses a sight found nowhere but here the tabletop plateaus the pomon Indians called tapules houses of God [Music] [Music] there's a mountain that in the moon language it means ape so we're gonna we're gonna find you know some of the elders to talk about
that mountain and why it's called like that before the sun goes down Seth looks for local varieties of his favorite animal oh wow fair to Lance you need to be really careful here of all the snake bite fatalities in South America this one causes the vast majority if it doesn't kill you the limb that it bites turns into just a black soup of necrotic and dead tissue use the app to amputate much better camouflage and unlike a rattlesnake doesn't have a rattle to warn you sits along the trails and just Nails people so you have
to be very very cautious around this snake that camouflage you could step on it without even knowing it's a little guy but he packs a serious punch 50 milligrams is a fatal dose most of them have about 105 super painful I'm Gonna Leave This one alone got poison after before the team crosses sacred land the pomon initiate them with a local beverage you're gonna love it Maniac route blended with human saliva they're fictional counterparts endured their own ritual ah thank you very much you level this attention don't you contact with the outside world ravaged pomon
culture but not their Legends [Music] uh are there any Legends or stories or sightings reports from yeah [Music] Legends they believe that they would hunt down humans and take them away so there is fear yes the image of a wild hairy man running around the woods is an image in many cultures around the world this is before Darwin before Evolution thousands of years ago people believed in the wild man of the woods the brow riches the line of the jewel the Indians in South America had Legends of deities of Half Men half Apes exactly the
kind that Conan Doyle writes about quite unique yes I should name them surface Challenger it eight men aren't the only beasts that haunt their Legends drownings and capsizes are blamed on a water dragon called ratto the pamon suggests the the sightings in the village uh in the lagoon are basically of a giant snake a couple of years ago there was a couple of tourists walking along the Sandy banks of the kanaima Lagoon and one of them was taken by in this case was a snake and pulled into the water our bedtime stories in lost world
country [Music] slooms I had to pull it sister Mountain to rorima it said to Harbor demons and it beckons the team thank you [Music] deep within lies the source of the Mountain's power a tiny clef called The Devil's Canyon the current is so strong it can sweep you away death swims here this tree anteater may have slipped on the Rocks above or did the demons claim another victim the tamandua is unique to South America it uses its prehensile tail to move through the trees searching for ants foreign [Music] by the campfire Tales Dean investigates kanaima
Lagoon realm of a water dragon or just local color nearby in 1951 a European reported a creature like a plesiosaur us there before but the Rattle and the spirit gods are supposed to reside behind the waterfalls are at the bottom so we're going to go and have a look foreign surmises the fate of those who enter Grotto's domain not sucked under by a dragon but the undertow four is there a third explanation at the faucet used hope of anaconda's reaching 130 feet we'd had reports in the area of some of the anacondas being up to
37 to 40 feet so there's certainly some big ones out there [Music] now their ordeal begins [Music] a long hot Trek to the base of warima and danger underfoot all the way [Music] he wants to know which direction your head is about 10 days due north of here foreign it's an area the Indians avoid they say they're bad spirits there in the real Lost World evil takes many forms hi Dean how are you good to see you I want to meet some friends from the village before the journey toward rarima resumes Dean consults The Village's
oldest Shame about predators of ancient legends can you ask them if they've seen anything like this one would eat the humans so they come off the top right Romans swept down eat the villagers down below wow this is exactly as the ancient Explorer is right in their journals exactly what they were writing exactly the same stories as the Indians told the Explorers as they pass through this area so this is so exciting like the early explorers the team needs help reaching your arrival each villager shoulders more than 60 pounds it's two days to the base
of arima an up and down slog under a blistering Sun they follow a network of pomon Indian Trails worn by centuries of travel [Music] as the plateau looms larger cave formations appear Hazel and Peter plan to explore caves recently discovered and verify reports of life never before seen [Music] the most exciting thing is going to be when you get on top getting in the cave these could be the most ancient caves on Earth so it's going to be fascinating the microbes that lived in there I mean really could have been doing what they're doing now
60 million years ago 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs were still around on the path to rorima the loads are heavy but the trail is clear The first explorers weren't so lucky a century ago this was dense jungle Thurman Perkins had to hack their way through a yard by yard [Music] on the fourth morning of our journey life seemed to me as gloomy as it could be the difficulties which laid before us seemed insurmountable then suddenly the forest ended by a lucky chance the mountain was free from cloud [Music] Thorne wasn't out of the
woods yet [Music] ahead a gauntlet of venom and the notorious bullet ant with a sting like a gunshot this is the famous bullet ant locally called it is probably the most feared animal in the jungle when you walk towards them they actually look around they feed on other insects they're huge it is terribly painful one sting by the abdomen can give 24 hours of extreme pain it's like a burning sensation like a cigarette being lit on your skin [Music] at midday a pocket Forest offers relief from 100 degree Heat I think I've lost five pounds
since the village and we're only on the lower foothills of Ryman son get a couple blisters on the heel but they'll dry up over the next 10 minutes or so [Music] I've been at this for half an hour now and I'm getting I'm getting a little bit discouraged because oh look at this look at this this is a huge burrow right here this is one of the world's largest tarantulas I can tell by the size of that and look at that this is theraphosa apophysis and this is a beautiful spider this is a very ancient
tarantula spider they've been on this planet about 23 million years oh that's worth it I was worth a gap Through the Jungle keep her in sight they have two enormous fangs that are about three quarters of an inch long I'm not worried about a bite because they're generally pretty good if you don't molest them and grab them and hurt them tarantulas are so old though the cavemen of spiders no fancy webs for them just ambush it stabs prey then injects Venom her Intruders while it dimes that lays down a silk fence once it sucks out
the juices all that's left is a dry shell and it's a girl that is a nice big tarantula there we go there we go time to move on is so high it traps clouds drifting off the Atlantic each year they dump 140 inches of rain camon believed that when white men approach Spirits cloak the mountain sensing rain leaf cutter ants take cover their Harvest will grow mold to feed the colony [Music] at last rest briefly tomorrow and the next day are going to be the toughest out of the trade I thought um hard on blisters
if you had them a natural remedy for aching muscles night brings trouble a front moves in it can turn Trails into torrents and stop the team in their tracks their fate Now lies with the spirits of the mountain after a nighttime Deluge Pope Dons but the Expedition is not in a sunny mood oh I think everyone's relatively tired this morning and uh we have to go up this Trail down to another River and then all the way up to the basement and uh I think that there'll be some people on the team that are struggling
to make it the whole way it was a little rough but I'm doing all right uh every muscle in my body is screaming in pain but uh and we we're still not even there we're in the lower Foothills look at all this stuff how the can we expect to go without bearings as far as we have to hello igneous um what would it be there the team must cover 10 miles today but two members are already off on the wrong foot so we're sitting here with this chairman and I haven't had this toy pterodactyl and
handed to him and said what do you know about these he's talking about how the pterodactyls would fly down off the peak of lorimo and swoop down and pick up their children and take back up there and eat them well there weren't any pterodactyls I guess that's my point you know I mean it's like Hazel needs evidence continually shifting I think it's been written about since the 15th century about the pterodactyls because they actually drew the pictures of them Seth offers an explanation no in the Autos we were able to see large storks that as
the sun was going down looked identical to a pterodactyl when they were silhouetted yeah true bright sky a terrorism it's a terror song what have you done with our dinner a real-life pterosaur has just swooped off without dinner and you bring me a muff so slacker our team resumes the market to arima with more than their breakfast to chew on up the trail the debate over a lost world fact versus fiction will only get hotter foreign [Music] a rare find the Rima rattlesnake found nowhere else he's grumpy oh wow that's what we were hoping to
see is that a room of species yes I don't know of any known photos you can look on the internet everywhere to find a photo of one amazing see the tongue going up I don't know nothing very feisty if the tongue just comes out like this they're just testing the air and and uh smelling for prey however if the tongue comes out and she lays it back like this that means that she's very upset and to watch out because she's about to strike they move it out of Striking Distance and move on [Music] two miles
down the trail a link to the first varima expedition the remains of a village where thurn and Perkins passed the strangeness of rorimer seems to have made deep Impressions on the minds of the Indians and filled their thoughts with folklore to an unusual extent we encountered two of their villages on our journey to the mountain The Villages are gone so are some species giant ant eaters the size of German shepherds and a distant cousin of the horse a tape here looks like a nice swimming hole down there yeah it looks beautiful the water's quite clear
it doesn't even have much tanning in it yeah a natural moat guards The Lost World River it's shout but slippery and treacherous ankle twisting obstacle course [Music] we made it [Applause] [Music] not even on the ramp it's getting steep huh the landscape changes can't even talk any step could bring discovery life strange to their eyes how strange The first explorers could only guess [Music] at the base of the mountain third predicted what waited at the top primeval life unchanged for millennia whether the place be quite inaccessible to modifying influences or not it is at least
certain that not only the fauna but also the Flora must present features of great interest botanists spend their lives seeking a single new plant here Thorne would find 53. [Music] near the base of oraima even the familiar becomes bizarre life wears basic black to blend in and for other reasons it's a spiny lizard you can see how dark it is and uh normally this is almost a silver colored lizard and this is the first melanistic animal that we found on the hike upper Rima which actually means that it has a lot of dark pigment so
this little animal in order to digest its food it has to elevate its body temperature to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit the black pigment actually helps after hiking all day in 100 degree Heat relief tomorrow it's all uphill [Music] only one way up and it took half a century to find it ah this is absurd we've walked nearly halfway around this plateau this mountain was considered to be unclimbable and that's probably one of the things that appealed to a character like M thurin uh to to climb the unclimbable mountain to dream The Impossible Dream that was
part of the fabric of the personality of these explorers [Music] thurn and Perkins spent weeks searching for a path of prorima they searched in vain then hidden by trees the key we saw a ledge running diagonally from the bottom to the top of the opposite Cliff of warima which from where we were certainly seemed to offer a very practical way of ascent what's the track like along that ledge up there and it looks pretty narrow it is it's only a couple of feet wide and it could be very slippery with a 400 meter drop so
we have to be very careful on that part that Forest is full of venomous snakes venomous ants venomous scorpions I mean there's there's a lot of things in there besides just slipping and puncturing yourself on some of the thorny undergrowth please [Music] the watchword for tomorrow watch your step on both sides looms Danger vertigo or Venom [Music] after two days of hard hiking the lost world team reaches the base of Laura Rima troubles Brewing we're a little bit concerned about the weather because our barometer is saying that air pressure is going low so it could
mean a change in the weather pattern which has been good so far this is the critical point in our trip as far as going up the mountain and we're really hoping for good weather it rains so much on rorima natives call it the mother of all Waters the team calls it the cloud machine ready to roll packed ready looking forward to the big adventure the big trip it's gonna be a hard hike so it's gonna be worth it in the long run [Music] [Music] two centuries ago this path was virgin turf seldom if ever did
we step on the real ground but instead climbed hand and feet all fully employed over masses of vegetation dense enough to Bear our weight these elevated root mats mats of roots are the ones that are in turn described in his descent where they were never actually touching the the ground they were climbing all over this mess it's been really difficult about a trail [Music] certainly you got to give a lot of respect to the early explorers of for Rima 150 years ago it was a completely different ball game though those were hard men those were
true explorers and tough guys danger lurks all around bullet ants below tree snakes above if they watch our ankles and watch your hands remember there's arboreal vipers here oh great thanks anybody sees one let me know snakes instead a rare sight this wasp needs a place to hatch Offspring and she's found it a living cradle that will suffer a slow death this is a tarantula hawk wasp that has found a tree tarantula has lured out of its burrow has stung it paralyzed it and it's dragging it to this abandoned Barrel and she'll take the tarantula
inside the burrow paralyzed lay a single leg on it cover the burrow up and The larva that hatches from that egg will eat all the outer limbs of the spider everything but the vital organs until last so that spider will be alive and be slowly eaten and this is the first time I've seen the whole event from start to finish and this is very very rare to catch this on film on the slopes of rorima rare life thrives a thousand plants are found nowhere else yes it is so is this the one that's related to
the African species okay and actually it's one of the few edible plants oh really yeah would you like to try one sure what do you do it's the newborn Leaf okay read that you just eat this bit that white part yeah it tastes like artichoke heart foreign [Music] a glimpse of the summit two thousand feet up awesome [Music] time to refuel get some water I think it's gonna get rainy on us pretty soon I hope not is it kind of late might be almost dark before we get there the trail winds through a tunnel of
branches inches away a sheer Cliff dropping 800 feet that's where the fun is going to start huh nice view the grand Savannah from here let's see all the way back to the Village huh yeah soon and um Perkins would have stood right on this very spot oh really I have a look in the Grant's banner and the old permanent Village which is right down there on the hill see there yeah we better get our clothes on guys this is starting to rain yeah somebody angered the rain gods yeah the final leg to the summit is
not for the timid steep 45 degree ramp and Conan Doyle's novel explorers reached the lost world over a log spanning a chasm just like this one [Music] the ramp is no Cakewalk this is a steep incline to get around this huge monolith that's fallen off the escarmid so now after climbing this enormous straight up hike we've got to go straight down around it and straight back up again now this is our last bit it's very steep though so you have to be careful with slippery rocks [Music] foreign [Music] just yards away lies the summit and
the unknown [Music] what the hell are those who found it Leo the lair of the pterosaurs [Laughter] when we get back to London Leo remind me to invite the board of the Royal Society to eat their heads on Rimer it's a carnivore far more bizarre [Music] nine thousand feet above the Amazon the rorima Expedition reaches their goal I think this is it the summit of the Lost World oh my God like Dorothy opening the door to Oz they stepped into another world yeah a menagerie of gargoyles carved over eons by wind and rain set amid
Gardens meticulously tended by an unseen hand [Music] they're as stunned as the first explorers [Music] those men expected Living Legends but reality was even better when them turned got to the top of rorima he didn't find dinosaurs he didn't find flying pterodactyls he found a strange landscape of fantastically shaped rocks and terrain that was like nothing he'd ever seen before then the step was taken and we saw surely as strange a sight regarded simply as a product of nature as may be seen in this world shapes as people as animals as at one point he
says tortoises and teapots everything it was like Alice in Wonderland and then there were these clouds and Mists drifting in and out of everything it was dangerous too because if you'd made a misstep and you were obscured by the Mist you could break your leg [Music] even on a clear day hazards abound mazes to lose your way and crevasses to break your neck I finally made it and uh this place is truly beautiful I'm not a religious person but you'd swear you'd climbed up into God's Garden [Music] this is going to be our home for
the next couple of days we'll make it comfortable a lost world secret beckons a Subterranean Network discovered three years ago by Czech cavers the check cavers reported that they've actually seen some very very large and unusual formations that are all microbial and structure so this could be profoundly important and some remember right out at The Cliff face so we got a creep up see if we could see if we can see him without falling 400 meters to our deaths the checks penetrated more than two and a half miles How Deep The Cave goes no one
knows Hazel and Peter will be the first scientists inside we're gonna head in today and have a look around and see how the cave is formed see if there's any interesting biology or microbiology in the cave what we're looking for is Extreme of house organisms have adapted to extreme environments oh my God so you can't get much more extreme than a starved cave on top of a stark tapui so it'll be interesting to see what grows there theoretically nothing should go there so this may give Clues to life on other planets in our solar system
[Music] cave was named for this natural sculpture Crystal eyes formed when quartz crystals gouged holes during one of the frequent flash floods one of the worries we had in this cave was flooding where you know the valley that we're camping in the whole area floods into this cave entrance so we needed to really understand the cave environment caving can be quite dangerous and you really do need to understand the cave environment that you're in the ceiling peels off it's very very soft and if you hit it with your head big lumps fall down foreign [Music]
Clues perhaps to how life could form on other planets weird and how it began here on Earth an Iguanodon nonsense oh yes that's right just like a kangaroo foreign two miles underground a long ago visitor lost his way come across this reasonably articulated mammal skeleton it appears to be a quarter windy this is a great example of how caves servants fantastic time capsules this animal could have come in here thousands of years ago died right here and his bones are still here intact until this find no one knew kawadis even lived under Rima they inhabit
the southern U.S and Latin America as members of the raccoon family they eat almost anything [Music] a favorite kawadi snack is a rare species found only on rarama [Music] she's biting the stick [Music] is a very angry tarantula [Music] I have to tell you I've seen tarantulas all over the world but I've never seen this one before after sniffing out a tarantula Coates used their paws to deflect its poisonous fangs a kawadi may have followed prey deep into the cave and never found its way out while some seek life underground others comb the surface most
of oraima's small creatures exist nowhere else on Earth so I've been looking all morning and other than a few tarantulas and some centipedes I haven't found anything at all wait yeah actually I've been searching a lot for one of these and it's the rarama Frog this is a full-grown adult where food is scarce small is better dinosaurs closest relatives live in Africa a reminder of a time when two continents parted at rurima [Music] it's very very warm out today I don't want it to get overheated so I'll let it go back into the water and
they don't look like much of a swimmer they don't have very webbed feet so I'm interested to see how he swims or maybe not swim at all seems to be just floating there he goes after surfacing Hazel tracks another adaptation to the Lost World a vegetable that eats meat the ecosystem on warima is unique is extremely starved there's no soil here it's all rock so the plants that live here can't get their nutrients in a regular way from the soil so they've actually adapted to eat insects rorima has two types of meat eaters pitcher plants
tempt prey with sweet nectar downward angled hairs trapped for digestion coated with sticky nectar that's snares and consumes passersby on rarima men found carnivores after all in third he brought back 53 species of plants that were never discovered before he really made his Mark as a naturalist as an Explorer but in the public mind it was no big deal because he didn't find dinosaurs on the top of rorima and Conan Doyle did the lost world can be seen as a parable by Conan Doyle that we don't know what's around the next Corner that science doesn't
know everything [Music] when you look at the whole concept of the lost world as portrayed in the novel to think back what it was like when the dinosaurs had only really been recognized and I think it 100 years ago it captured the imagination to think that maybe they could still be out there somewhere at every stage of our life and human existence we always thought at that stage we're at we knew it all right yes they're saying that yeah well I mean that that's how it is because no I don't think so I mean it
is it is because as in the fictional Lost World hope clashes with fact there's actually a lot of parallels from the last World book where a challenger walks into a room of scientists and says you guys have to believe me because I've seen this and that's not how science works but in this enormous expanse evidence could still lurk the size of 15 000 football fields rorima can hide lots of Secrets one secret is about to be plucked a clue to life on other planets the last day in the Lost World the team Ventures into rorima's
Netherworld seeking life unknown I wish I could find a day to go underground yeah perfect for one it's a shot in the dark dinosaur hunt my mission for the day is to search for any evidence of Life be it fossil evidence of animals or pre-human existence I've got my little thermal imaging device here which is going to pick up on possibly any evidence of secret cabins and if there's any life down here this will pick it up we'll also be using infrared Hayes and I have been in a little ways and Cave is fairly complicated
so you don't want to go wandering off by yourself or it might take us a few hours to find you so if you get lost in there I think most of you bought a whistle with you just sit there don't be moving around the more you move around the more lost you're going to get the deeper you can go into the cave the streams cut into an incised Canyon here we're gonna have to step over the cave is an architectural Wonder a series of Chambers carved out by flash floods wow this is huge my job
each the size of a concert hall [Music] in this lifeless Cavern life at last there's a cricket in there underwater we're at the bottom of the pool no way really good that he's crawling along the bottom no way I think's huge yes right there oh my God I swear I've seen millions of crickets I've never seen one underwater order before they don't swim though do they this one is no one has ever filmed this ancient species and no one has ever seen it swim it Dives like a submarine by releasing pockets of air [Music] oh
I've just come to another pond and here's one of these aquatic oh it bit me look at that look at the mandibles on that I've never seen anything like this before long sensory antenna on it huge huge mandibles just like wire cutters I mean it's biting my leather glove fantastic spines on the legs probably preventing something from trying to grab it and eat it and no wonder in this vast Crypt death Waits foreign I've been traveling through the cave all morning coming across these giant orb webs and when I say giant this particular one is
really nice it's three feet across and they're made by these tiny little orb spiders and the only possible explanation I can think of for such a large web in these breezeways is that it has to be large to catch the very few flying insects that come through here amazing with so little food on arima orb spiders conserve Nutrition By recycling their webs then the strangest sight of all so these are the warm when water drips off limestone yet the cave is dry so how did these grow there's some that are falling down there and when
you look at them end on it looks like there's spider webs in the middle of them and you can see all the spiders around there's at least four webs here those are orb spiders right now billions of microorganisms are eating the quartz walls leaving a fine silicate dust that sticks to the webs over thousands of years the dust takes this shape and one of the most isolated places on Earth Hazel has found a new building block of life microbes that live off glass the cave May hold Clues to the oldest life on Earth and survival
in the harshness of outer space [Music] the life Dean seeks eludes him [Music] spot the Tails from the vermined shaman regarding large pterodactyls sweeping off the summit of Royal Reimer and sweeping up their children on the surface there's just no evidence the second best bet is down here in a Subterranean cave system I've been searching around for a little while now but unfortunately that biggest crew that we found is a cricket it's time to surface Spirits are upset teams in danger oh it's a big thunderstorm coming on we have to head out quickly of the
cave and can't get flooded the barometer is dropping and then there's a big storm coming and we have to leave support range really really bad and everybody was like and then we got to the cave entrance and it's thundering and lightning and we're all dashing across as the rain comes down and we're all relieved that we aren't now someone went [Music] it's truly a unique environment I've never seen anything like this in a cave we're in one of the most starved environments on Earth there shouldn't be anything alive in there and the whole cave is
teeming with life which is just absolutely spectacular it's amazing that the original explorers when they came here were looking for dinosaurs dinosaurs really are here they're just microscopic [Music] a journey to the lost world has fulfilled dreams but not always the ones they imagined in a starved cave Peter and Hazel found new life a discovery so stunning even NASA is impressed it could unravel secrets of life on other planets creatures so rare few have seen them Rick uncovered species unique to rorima Ian found no Living Legends but the Legends he heard form a missing link
a bridge connecting fat with fiction some of the great stories like the lost world and later King Kong did not arise from a vacuum these were based on real exploits of real men explorers who had tremendous grit tremendous determination and a fantastic combination of scientific interest and a romantic imagination this is what down there on the hill see there yeah rorima stands as a monument to curiosity for those who know how to view the world discoveries abound there are many worlds within worlds to be discovered today worlds within our own DNA deep in caves previously
inaccessible places where finding light seven miles under the Earth's surface there are many lost worlds still to explore [Music] Rick is traveling to Mexico to search for rare spiders Seth leads excursions into the American
