Tepui. It sounds like something you might say after you've sneezed, but it's actually the name of one of the most bizarre geological features on the planet. Tepuis are tall plateaus of sandstone that rise above the northeastern Amazon rainforest, in Venezuela and Colombia. Because of their isolation, they serve much the same ecological role as islands do, serving as a refuge for hundreds of animals and plants found nowhere else in the world. Just a few of the things that live on tepuis include carnivorous pitcher plants, rock-clinging bromeliads, and frogs that give birth instead of laying eggs.
The tepuis have long been an inspiration for writers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic science-fiction novel The Lost World imagined dinosaurs surviving on top of one of these isolated plateaus. In the 2009 animated movie Up, a waterfall on a tepui (named "Paradise Falls" and based on the real Angel Falls) becomes the final destination for an old man who wishes to keep a promise to his wife.
Studying the tepuis is often easier said than done. The sheer height of the cliffs makes them hard to climb up, and often the tops are obscured by thick clouds. In some cases, the only way to get reliable images of the very top is by using radar carried aboard airplanes.
However, expeditions to the the tepuis almost always reveal new species. In 2016, an expedition into the limestone caves of one of the largest tepuis resulted in the discovery of several species of blind cave fish, which had been isolated from their nearest relatives for millions of years. Simply by virtue of their impenetrable design, the tepuis are one of the few ecosystems on Earth that still has a great deal left to explore.
A tepui rises high over the rainforest below it like a stone skyscraper. Difficult to navigate and explore, tepuis are one of the last frontiers of the study of biodiversity
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