A new lost world…

The world just got a little bit bigger; at least it did for me. After all, it isn’t every day that something new turns up on this planet. I’d pretty much got used to the idea that we’d found pretty much everything ‘new’ and then scientists find eighty ‘something news’ at a place that goes by the fabulous name of The Hindenburg Wall.

I’d never heard of The Hindenburg Wall until today. It’s a huge limestone escarpment in the Star Mountains in the far west of Papua New Guinea. The Star Mountains have an annual rainfall of 10,000mm a year, earthquakes are frequent, and massive landslides are common; so not the place for a quiet camping holiday. The name sounds like it might have been dreamt up by H. Rider Haggart, massively tall and remote the Wall could have come straight from the pages of Conan Doyle’s Lost World or King Kong’s mist-shrouded island. The sort of place where pterodactyls nest in the crags, giant rats scurry in the undergrowth, and huge carnivorous plants munch on unsuspecting intruders.

When I heard about it on the radio my old long-ago wonder began to bubble once more I became an eight year old boy again. I loved Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Dr. Challanger’s expedition to The Lost World with the dinosaurs and other wonders I found there.

The Hindenburg Wall is a real lost world, with over eighty new species of animals and plants discovered already. The scientists say that it’s one of the most bio-diverse spots on the planet. So far they’ve found a rat as big as a small dog, new types of carnivorous plants, a rose-pink orchid, a new species of spurflower and rhododendron, giant butterflies, previously undiscovered insects and frogs, and what could be the world’s smallest wallaby.

No dinosaurs yet, but who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered? The expedition team were only there for four weeks so they’ve probably only scratched the surface of what is wandering around in the steamy jungle. Anything could be hiding in there just waiting to be found.