Lost World Discovered

Post Reply New Topic

Straight out of Jurassic park!

a massive 192m sinkhole that has its own forest at the bottom.
The pit is located in Leye County, in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Xinhua News Agency reported.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to know that there are species found in these caves that have never been reported or described by science until now,” Chen Lixin, who led the Guangxi 702 cave expedition team that discovered the chasm, told Live Science.
https://www.livescience.com/new-sinkhol ... ered-china
The team also found the sinkhole harboured three interior caves, which were likely to have formed by erosion when the pit first appeared.

Perhaps the most impressive feature was a “well-preserved primitive forest” at the pit’s base, which was home to prehistoric-like trees measuring over 40m tall, according to the researchers. The dense undergrowth, meanwhile, came up to the explorers’ shoulders.

Cool stuff! Will be interesting in coming years to see what reports of discoveries arise.

In one of those caves is a doorway that leads to Mars.

Hope there are dinosaurs! Not so much giant spiders, though.

It's a weird one given the forest species appear to be primordial/possibly extinct species managing to cling to life in a sinkhole that's deep enough to avoid competition from topside animals and plants but in a position where the bottom of the hole receives enough light keeping the flora and fauna alive despite sinking (who knows how many millions of years ago).

I'm hoping there may be extinct animal species clinging to life in this hole.

Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Imagine some hominid that was the missing link still lurking about in the hole....

Then watch the religious right deny its humanity, as that would deny the literal interpretation of Genesis.

Thank goodness for insular dwarfism...but the explorers should be prepared for insular gigantism! Unless the vegetation in that place results in a region where the air is much more dense with oxygen than the current average on the rest of the planet though, I think the prospect of that crater harboring Carboniferous lifeforms is quite low, so giant arthropods are unlikely. In the case of spiders, I would be surprised if anything much larger than a tarantula is discovered.

As for non-avian dinosaurs, it's definitely a good thing they would very likely be much smaller than their ancestors, as humans would not last long were that not the case. However, they can be added to a very long list of creatures that would still be quite dangerous.

Oh yes! I didn't think about that. After millions of years the extinct populations may no longer resemble the original population stock. If say the hole sank 130 million years ago then any small dinosaur species left after surviving the sinkhole will undergo further evolution so might be really small or miniaturised. This is called the "island effect".

There is infact an extinct dinosaur that survived tectonic split and survived in the island of New Zealand called the Tuatara. it's amazingly 250 million years old!!

If "it" was human, why wouldn't it have evolved along with the rest of humanity?

Homo erectus never changed for several hundred thousand years. Because...they were lazy (no joke)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 091542.htm

The title says Laziness helped lead to extinction of Homo erectus.

Were you guys talking about extinct or living humanoids?

Is a great idea for a book, but as with many of these "Discoveries", they talk as if no one else knows about it but the locals have known about it for years. Take a look at the nearby paths which lead right up to the edge and it looks like they go down into it.

It reminds me of these little spiders which jumped. They were often found on roofs around here as they liked the heat. They did not make webs but were so agile and quick they would jump on their pray to eat them.
They were harmless to us humans and if anything one could put ones hand down when on a roof and they would jump around it. Only small things they were.

My Dad as a carpenter was often on roofs as part of his job and we all knew of these spiders anyway as they were everywhere!

What really surprized my Dad and actually surprized me one day when I was young was that somewhere around the mid 1980's they made the announcement on our news that scientists had discovered a new species of spider and it happened to be these spiders they had discovered. Yet they had always been here and were always known about as they were here in their millions and could be found miles away from here as if we went for a drive somewhere else it was rare not to see them! (Though I do admit that our family 3 wheeler van (Yellow Reliant Regal Supervan 3 which one may have known as was almost identical to the ones used on "Only Fools And Horses") did have a small fault in that they did not have enough airflow hitting their radiators (Which was improved when the Reliant Robins came in) so on long trips in the summer we had to stop every 50 or so miles and take a break and my Dad would wait and get a cloth and very carefully (When it had cooled a little) open the radiator cap and pour in a little aater to replace the water and coolant which had bubled out. Worlds first aluminium engine in mass production in those little cars and vans. Very strong little engines too!)
But the longest trips we did in one go back then were to my Grandparents which was around 75 miles each way. So these little jumping spiders may in theory just be around Wales but I doubt it. I believe they are all around the UK, but they usually were found on rooftops in sunny weather.

Was a total surprize when they said they were a new discovery. My Dad said something like "Where have these scientists been not to have noticed them before?"

Glitch -
There's always the possibility of them having evolved into a different subspecies. Such was the case with Neanderthals, Denisovans and other archaic humans, who despite having drifted apart from modern humans genetically, were still human, and were in part our ancestors.

Homo erectus and Homo Sapiens neaderthalis didn't evolve over long periods so were unable to compete with the newly emerging Homo Sapiens Sapiens (us).

I'm just sayin the sinkhole could have shielded a community of Homo erectus from modern humans who could have survived like a prehistoric Gilligan's Island.