Abstract

From a vast sea of rain forest in southern Venezuela emerge a set of mountains like no others on earth. These mountains – known as Tepuis—of relatively flat summits and vertical walls, rising several thousand feet over the forest floor, are the remnants of a gigantic plateau that once covered the Guayana shield, and represent today one of the most spectacular, and for the most part unknown, landscapes on the planet. Tepuis can be considered as a living laboratory of evolution, similar to the Galápagos Islands that inspired Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Since the first ascent of Roraima-tepuy in 1884 by Im Thurn and Perkins, these mountains, sacred to the region’s indigenous inhabitants, have fascinated scientists and adventurers alike, yet essential questions regarding the origin of tepuy flora and fauna remain to date unsolved. Tepuis are now protected under the Venezuelan National Park System, but numerous threats to its preservation remain. The seminar will draw out the issues of biodiversity, conservation and the context of the new geopolitics.

The rocks that constitute this formation are mostly sandstones dating back several billion years and that were laid upon the shield at the very origin of the earth’s crust. Fragmentation of the plateau and the subsequent erosion over several hundred million years gave rise to the mountain system we know today. Some fifty summits witness these geological processes. The isolation in space and time originated a rich and peculiar flora and fauna that evolved separately and parallel to give rise to a very high degree of endemism. The geography and topography of this “island system” has a tremendous influence on the local and regional climate and this, on the other hand, on the evolutionary processes that took and are still taking place.