An ancient 'lost city' teeming with life

[Judi Lynn]

The rainforest largely untouched by humans


After archaeologists discovered an ancient city deep in the Central American rainforest, researchers found something else: it’s home to animals long presumed to be extinct.

By Elizabeth Pustinger
5 June 2020

Located in the eastern-most corner of Honduras and the northern tip of Nicaragua, the dense tropical forest of La Mosquitia is one of the largest rainforests in Central America and – until recently – one of the last scientifically explored places on Earth. In 2013, archaeologists using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) mapping technology unearthed the remains of an ancient, “lost city” buried within its depths.

Ever since, researchers have been studying this dense jungle, looking not only for more of the ancient Mesoamerican city’s remains, but also scouring its untouched terrain in search of wildlife. What they recently found was greater than they had anticipated: a rich ecosystem teeming with hundreds of species of fauna and flora – some of which had been previously believed to be extinct.

In 2017, led by Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program in a partnership with the Government of Honduras, a team of biologists spent two weeks in the jungle researching and cataloguing the many rare and endangered species that have found the watershed of the River Plátano, which runs through the rainforest, to be the perfect environment to thrive in. Findings in La Mosquitia include 22 species of plants and animals that had never been recorded in Honduras before and three species of animals that were thought to have vanished from the country: the pale-faced bat, the false tree coral snake and a tiger beetle that had only been seen in Nicaragua and was presumed to be extinct.

In total, researchers documented hundreds of species of plants, butterflies and moths, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish and mammals – with a great presence of cats, such as jaguars, pumas, ocelots, jaguarundis and margays – living in the rainforest.

More:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200604-the-ancient-lost-city-teeming-with-life