Primordia: In Search of the Lost World

AUTHORS NOTES & THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

Many readers ask me about the background of my novels — is the science real or fiction? Where do I get the situations, equipment, characters or their expertise from, and just how much of any element has a basis in fact?

In the case of the hidden plateau in the Amazon jungle, the novel, The Lost World, was my blueprint. However, myths and legends surrounding some of the creatures found there, and perhaps still living, persist to this day.

The Lost World was a novel created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and released in 1912. It was about an expedition to a tabletop mountain plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals still survived.

Doyle was already famous for his Sherlock Holmes novels, and this book, written just for fun, went on to become enormously popular. It’s almost impossible to count the number of times it has been published, reprinted, and re-released, and there have been numerous radio and movie adaptations.

The setting for The Lost World is believed to have been inspired by reports of Doyle’s good friend Percy Harrison Fawcett's 1906 expedition to a remote jungle plateau in Bolivia. Doyle was said to have been intrigued by the tale of the remote plateau with dangerous, impenetrable forests where Fawcett was said to have seen “monstrous tracks of unknown origin.”

However, there may have been another inspiration: a 1996 Science Fiction Studies review of an annotated edition of the novel suggested that the author was also greatly interested in the Pacaraima Mountains plateaus; Mount Roraima in particular.

Mount Roraima is the highest of the Pakaraima chain of tepui plateaus in South America and was first described by the great English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595. Its enormous flat-topped summit is bordered on all sides by cliffs rising over 1,000 feet and was wrapped in many local myths and legends and said to be home to strange creatures, gods, and monsters.

There were tales of monster snakes existing in the Amazon jungles for centuries, and they would have forever remained myths if not for a chance discovery in a coal mine in Colombia in 2008. It turned out that a monster snake lived at the time of the dinosaurs and in fact outlived them by nearly 10 million years.

Fossils of an enormous snake were discovered and paleontologists estimated its length to be well over 50 feet. They had no idea whether the specimen found might even have been representative of the largest of its kind, so they could have grown to twice that.

The snake, called Titanoboa, wasn’t just long but solid muscle that was as thick around as a draft horse and would have weighed in at over 3,000 pounds!

The monster snake lived during the Paleocene epoch, and also a 10-million-year period immediately following the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. The Titanoboa would have fed on the last of the dinosaurs and to this day, many scientists agree there is no reason for it to have become extinct.

They also agree that over-sized snakes could still exist in the Amazon basin. And that brings us neatly to the legend of the Yacumama, the Mother of the River.

In the mythology of the indigenous people of South America, the Yacumama is a monster, fifty paces long, and believed to live in various areas of the Amazon River, estuaries, and lagoons. According to the legend, the Indians would need to blow into a conch horn before entering the water, as this would bring it to the surface, forcing the Yacumama to reveal itself.

Experts believe that if the creature exists, it is more than likely to be a species of giant anaconda.

During the year 1906, the explorer Percy H. Fawcett (mentioned above), a friend and inspiration to Arthur Conan Doyle, claimed to have found a giant anaconda while traveling through the Amazon River. He shot the creature and when he measured its body stated it to be nearly 60 feet in length. He went on to say that they found trails in the swamp mud that were six feet across that supported stories by local Indians and rubber pickers that the anaconda sometimes reached an incredible size, completely eclipsing the one he had shot.

To this day, monster hunters still mount expeditions to the Amazon in search of the Mother of the River. Only time will tell if they are successful and determine whether the creature is still there.

A tepui is a tabletop mountain or mesa found in the Guayanan Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana. In the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people of the area, the word tepui means “house of the gods” and can also be an area that is taboo.

Canaima National Park is a 12,000 square mile park in southeastern Venezuela that is home to indigenous Pemon Indians that have an intimate relationship with the tepuis, and believe they are the home of the gods, demons, and “Mawari” spirits.

The park is home to lush jungles, exotic animals, and plateaus of rock called tepuis, which have vertical walls and almost flat tops and occupy about 65 % of the park. These geological islands create a unique biological environment as species can become trapped at their summit for millions of years, or perhaps even longer, as they are very ancient sandstone that have a granite base that is up to 3 billion years old.

Their sheer cliffs and waterfalls (including Angel Falls, which is the highest waterfall in the world, at 3,287 feet), create spectacular landscapes. The most famous tepui in the park is also the tallest called Mount Roraima.

These ancient geological structures date back to a time when South America and Africa were part of the Pangaea super-continent.

A comet is a solar system body that, when passing close to the sun, warms and begins to release gases producing a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. They have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from just a few years to potentially several millions of years. The appearance of a comet is called an apparition.

A significant comet impact on the Earth’s surface would be devastating depending on its mass and composition. But, even if they don’t make landfall, the full astral effects of a comet simply passing close to our planet is not yet known or fully understood.However, we have been able to observe other events within our solar system to make educated guesses.

On October 2014, Comet C/2013 A1, designate name: Siding Spring, plunged the magnetic field around Mars into chaos, said Jared Espley, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We think the encounter blew away part of Mars’ upper atmosphere, much like a strong solar storm would.”

Comet Siding Spring, like most comets, is surrounded by a strong magnetic field. When it passed close to Mars, the comet’s coma washed over the planet, with the dense inner coma potentially reaching the surface. For a period of time, Mars was flooded with an invisible tide of charged particles from the coma, and the powerful magnetic field around the comet temporarily merged with, overwhelmed, and distorted, the planet’s own magnetic field.

While doing research for my latest novel, I came across a few species of creepy crawlies that were truly horrific — so naturally, I had to use them! Both lived about a 100 million years ago, and I think you’ll agree we can all breath a sigh of relief that both aren’t around today!

A reader sent me information on something fantastic that lived during the Cretaceous period — the HELL ANT (no, seriously!).The newly discovered species of prehistoric Formicidae, or Hell Ant, as dubbed by its discoverer, had a physiology that lived up to its Underworldish name. They were huge and armor-plated with gruesome mouthparts and metal-infused spikes on their head used to impale their victims and then drink the running blood.

No other living ant species had such exoskeleton cranial anatomy. The larger of the species had a horn-like appendage that jutted out over their tusk-like mandibles. As well as being like an iron-armored rhino, these ants may also been vampires — when their mandibles moved upwards, they formed a perfect “gutter” that might have funneled hemolymph, insect blood, down to the mouthparts.

The specimen was beautifully preserved in amber — a prehistoric cockroach that lived 100 million years ago during the age of the dinosaurs. But the Manipulator Modificaputis was like no other cockroach, past or present.

Based on its physical appearance, scientists suggest it was a nocturnal hunter in the ancient coniferous forests. Unlike most cockroach varieties today who are scavengers, this hunting specimen had long legs covered in dense hairs, long forearms capable of clasping prey, a moveable head on a long neck, and an extra set of eyes covered with an umbrella-like shield. Added to that, it had mouthparts that were like a buzz saw.

The Killer Cockroach is more anatomically closely related to the praying mantodeans, and although praying mantises are predatory, they are mostly sit-and-wait predators. But the Manipulator Modificaputis was a hunter, and certainly would have had the body and the skill to chase down and eat its prey alive.