![]() “Caves harbour chemical compounds and microbes that we don’t know about,” he says.īy comparing these “pristine” bacteria to modern superbugs, Zowawi aims to better understand how pathogens develop resistance to antibiotics. Microbes that live in those caves are of special interest, says Hosam Zowawi, a clinical microbiologist from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who joined two of the expeditions. The team’s discoveries won’t be released until November, but it’s likely they’ll be able to introduce the world to another crop of previously unknown species. The most recent expedition was Sauro’s sixth. For example, Mount Roraima tepui is the only known habitat of the Roraima bush toad, a small amphibian that, in the face of danger, curls itself into a ball and rolls away. The tepuis are isolated by their soaring cliff walls and home to unique species of animals. The only way in is via entrances high in the walls or on the mountaintops, which can soar as high as 3000 metres. ![]() Sauro is now focused on better understanding how life evolves in these sunless labyrinths, cut off from the rest of the world. The team has also discovered new species of blind cave fish and bacteria. In 2012 the team turned up a never-before-identified mineral called rossiantonite. Each of his expeditions yields new discoveries. Sauro says travelling the tepuis’ twists and turns is like taking a trip back in time. The tepui caves have been protecting their contents for millions of years. “They safeguard material from the outside – there’s no wind, no surface erosion,” he says. It’s much older than what we expect.”Ĭaves are like nature’s treasure chests, says de Waele. “There’s nothing we can date inside, it’s all too old. ![]() “We don’t have a good idea of how old these caves are,” says Jo de Waele, a geographer and cartographer also at the University of Bologna. Sauro notes that limestone caves form over hundreds of thousands or a few millions of years his research suggests quartzite caves form over tens of millions of years. ![]() Most known caves form in limestone – calcium carbonate – which readily dissolves in water.īut the tepui caves run through quartz sandstone, which is less susceptible to water erosion, so caves form much more slowly. Many of the peculiar, lumpy, silica speleothems that only occur inside quartzite caves are formed by colonies of microorganisms working together on the bacterial equivalent of a skyscraper. Exactly how they form is still a mystery. Some resemble billowing clouds of smoke others look like a spray of mineral mushrooms. The speleothems – stalactites and stalagmites – take fantastic forms. The quartz walls often have a spooky pinkish hue, and organic acids in the water turn the cave streams red. The caves are “a completely different world”, says Sauro. ![]()
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