Frontispiece from the original The Strand run of The Lost World.
Photograph from the original The Strand run of The Lost World, showing "the explorers". From left to right: Edward Malone (W. H. Ransford), Professor Summerlee (Patrick Forbes), Professor Challenger (Conan Doyle), and Lord Roxton (Forbes).
The Lost World is a 1912 adventure novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describing an expedition led by Professor Challenger to a remote plateau somewhere in Brazil, on which dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles, and prehistoric mammals still exist. Partially influenced by the explorations of Percy Fawcett, the novel has itself inspired a number of cryptozoologists.[1]
Cryptozoological basis[]
Illustration of the plateau by Harry Rountree.
The basic plot of The Lost World, regarding prehistoric survivors on a South American plateau, is believed to have been inspired by Conan Doyle's meetings with explorer Percy Fawcett, who explored a number of mesas in Bolivia (including the Huanchaca Plateau, where he saw "monstrous tracks of unknown origin"). Doyle is known to have met Fawcett, and took part in a lecture alongside him on 13 February 1911, in which Fawcett spoke about his explorations. Fawcett also wrote that:
| “ | ...monsters from the dawn of man's existence might still roam these heights unchallenged, imprisoned and protected by unscalable cliffs. So thought Conan Doyle when later in London I spoke of these hills and showed photographs of them. He mentioned an idea for a novel on Central South America and asked for information, which I told him I should be glad to supply. The fruit of it was his Lost world in 1912, appearing as a serial in the Strand Magazine, and subsequently in the form of a book that achieved widespread popularity.
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Fawcett also famously claimed to have shot a giant anaconda in 1907, and an enormous man-eating "water-snake" does appear briefly in The Lost World. One of the prehistoric animals existing on The Lost World's plateau is a plesiosaur. By coincidence, in 1955 explorer Aleksandrs Laime claimed to have seen three 3' long plesiosaur-like animals sunning themselves by an unnamed river on the Auyán Tepui in Venezuela's "lost world".[2]
Influence on cryptozoology[]
The Lost World has served as youthful inspiration for several notable cryptozoologists.[3] Bernard Heuvelmans, the "Father of Cryptozoology", first developed an interest in unknown animals after reading The Lost World and Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.[1] Bill Gibbons, who has led several expeditions to the Congo in search of the mokele-mbembe, first became interested in the subject of living dinosaurs after seeing a film adaptation of The Lost World as a child.[1]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Coleman, Loren & Clark, Jerome (1999) Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0684856025
- ↑ Shuker, Karl P. N. (2016) Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors: The Creatures That Time Forgot?, Coachwhip Publications, ISBN 978-1616463908
- ↑ Shuker, Karl P. N. (2010) Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times, CFZ Press, ISBN 978-1-905723-62-1