Talk:Tepui

Insurmountable?

More information please. The article says "Kukenam Tepui...can no longer be climbed, as the precipice and the high plateau are particularly insurmountable." Either it is or it isn't insurmountable -- no qualifier is possible here. Is there a reason why it can no longer be climbed (a law, perhaps) or just that folks have given up trying (unlikely)? Xuehxolotl 23:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it or is it not?

Some of the most outstanding tepuis are Autana, Pico da Neblina (the highest one, on the Venezuelan-Brazil border)

But, the Pico da Neblina article states it is NOT a tepui. Anyone can solve this? 85.243.174.167 19:19, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

--

Pico da Neblina is most definitely NOT a tepui, and I have just edited the page to remove that incorrect information. See some pictures in this gallery, especially this picture, the third from the top in the rightmost column, titled "Acampamento Base" ("base camp" in Portuguese). One can see that Pico da Neblina is far from being a tabletop mountain - it has a rather sharp and steep pyramid-like shape. It is part of a "conventional" massif in an also "conventional" mountain range, the Serra do Imeri (as it is called in Brazil) or Serranía de la Neblina (as it is known in Venezuela), and does not share the unique features of a tepui. (The range is rather unconventional, though, in the sense that it has an unusually high altitude that interrupts an otherwise very low-lying plain on both sides of the range.)

If you have a look at a good map of South America that shows the political divisions of both Venezuela and Brazil, tepuis are almost exclusively found in the Venezuelan state of Bolívar, north of the Brazilian state of Roraima. The Imeri/Neblina range, while still belonging to the Guiana Highlands, is hundreds of kilometres or miles away, between the Brazilian and Venezuelan homonymous states of Amazonas, closer to Colombia. The two areas are very different from each other, and tepuis are not typical of the Neblina area's relief. There are other differences: for example, the area where tepuis are found is a savannah or open grassland (known as Gran Sabana in Venezuela), while the area around Neblina is covered with Amazon rainforest.

Please check again the Pico da Neblina article, because I have added new information to it. (I have always been fascinated by that mountain, so sheer and strange, and inaccessible to mere urbanite out-of-shape mortals like me, and I collect all information I can get about it.)

--UrsoBR (talk) 11:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Neblina is indeed a tepui. A few clarifications. Geologically, the Roraima formation is a system of ancient sandstone plateaus peppered throughout the Guiana shield. According to the pattern of uplifting of the sedimentary strata and the pattern of erosion, some of these sandstone mountains have retained their flat tops, while others are so eroded and the strata are folded in such a way, that the plateau becomes hardly recognisable. This is the case for Neblina. I am starting a new article on the whole Neblina massif, to distinguish it from Neblina peak, the highest point in the mountain. I am adding a contour map of the massif (based on NASA SRTM data) that clearly shows the rudimentary table-like shape of Cerro Neblina.

It is true that the highest concentration of tepuis is in the south-eastern Bolivar estate in Venezuela, however, tepuis are also present in Venezuela's Amazonas estate, Northern Brazil and Guyana. In the south-eastern Bolivar estate there is a large savanna ("La Gran Sabana") from which several of tepuis rise. However, not all tepuis rise from savannas, Autana, Marahuaca, Duida, etc. are all mountains heavily surrounded by thick rain forests. Please see "Venezuela's islands in time" published in National Geographic Magazine (May 1989), where a nice map of all tepuis and their distribution can be found.

Strickly speaking the word tepui comes from the Pemon natives of Bolivar, but the word has been borrowed by the scientific community and it is now widely in use to describe all the sandstone plateaus in the area. See for example http://www.worldwildlife.org/wildworld/profiles/terrestrial/nt/nt0169_full.html for an "ecological" definition of tepui, and where Neblina is listed as such.

Dycotiles (talk) 19:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Oldest Rocks?

"They are typically composed of sheer blocks of Precambrian sandstone or quartzite rocks" If the Tepuis are comprised of sedimentary rocks then they are certainly not the "oldest exposed rocks in the world", as the article claims. Exposed granites in Canada are likely older. Any Geologists care to correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.173.195.29 (talk) 19:54, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Seconding this. Can anyone clarify the age of these things, please? -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 21:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Tepui and Mesa?

What distinguishes a tepui from a mesa? The beginning of the article suggests that a tepui is a kind of mesa. But then it says tepuis are found only in that area of South America. Mesas certainly are found in many more places. The article on mesa doesn't even mention tepuis. 140.147.164.38 (talk) 21:15, 27 June 2008 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

A tepui is a mesa. Tepui is the name given by the Pemon natives of Bolivar state, and the name has stuck, so nowdays all the mesas in Bolivar and Amazon states in Venezuela are called Tepuis. I guess is simply a geographical denomination, a very similar mountain somewhere else in the world would be given a different name. Is like the use of the word "fell" for mountain in the Lake District in England. 90.199.166.233 (talk) 21:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

"Geology" of tepui in The Lost World

The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle: If I remember correctly, he says that Maple White Land (i.e., the tepui with the dinosaurs) is (a) made of basalt and (b) contains active volcanic processes. This has nothing to do with real tepui geology, right? -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 22:04, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Same geological feature as Massif de Tamgue in Guinea?

It seems to me, an amateur geologist at best, that there many similarities between the South American Tepui sandstone plateau formations, and the sandstone plateau formations that are found in the West African (notably Guinea, Sierra Leone, etc.) mountains. The Massif de Tamgue has many similar examples of this sort of mountain formation. If you do a Google image search for "Fouta Djalon" (a mountain in the Massif de Tamgue range), you can see many examples of this, for instance.

Because of the tectonic activity, the region of South America that would be where the Tepui formations are found (Venezuela and vicinity) would have at one time been connected in roughly the same place in West Africa as these almost identical formations that are found. If this is so, if the mountains of these two ranges were at one time connected and produced by the same geological forces, it would be nice to make a note of that in this article. --Saukkomies ^talk 14:28, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Classifiable as sky islands?

I'm intrigued to see no mention of the tepuis as Sky islands. Is there a distinction that I am missing here, or is the omission unintentional? It certainly seems to possess many of the characteristics.-108.14.124.212 (talk) 23:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why a tepui shouldn't be considered a sky island. Kortoso (talk) 21:27, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Popular culture addition

BBC's Explorer: The last Tepui is missing. It is about exploring Tepui's wild life (frogs) and climbing (the way to get there) with Alex Honnold and Bruce Means. Hvstms (talk) 21:24, 29 March 2023 (UTC)