SCRAMBLNG TO LOAD THE CARGO OF SCIENTIFIC COLLECTIONS INTO THE CARGO NET TO BE SUSPENDED UNDER THE HELICOPTER AS IT HOVERS OVER YAVI TEPUY ABOVE LA GRAN SABANA, VZ.

This may have been the kinds of activity involving marine assaults on unknown beacheads in South East Asia. But here we were surroounded by a scientifically unknown "terra incognita", and as "Terramar" scientific investigators, we were to make it more understandable.

This was the first touchdown on the summmit of an unkown an protected tepuy in the remote regions of equatorial Venezuela, and as such we had to make sure it was left undistrubed without the intoroduction of exotic biota, but at the same time, methodically collected and cataloged. The subtle differences in pattern--such as the varieties of carnivorous plants, or the DNA drift of the endemic hummingbirds, to be compared with the other tepuys where they had been known and previoulsy collected and described, would be important bits of information from which to make inferences about the independent evolution of life on these isolated "life islands" in the rainforest. These ecosystems are as importatn as laboratoires of the changing patterns of life as the Galapagos were to the sharp observations of the specimens collected by Charles Darwin and sent back to England for analysis, later showing the "Finches Beak" varying pattern of size within the species, until speciation had occurred by specialized splits of the bird's feeding and survival pattern. This work has been followed to the present on Daphne Major by Princeton biologists to see in real time the pattern of environmnetal pressures, including El Nino years, on the trend of variation in the Finch population.

Here on this unknown tepuy of Yavi, the collections of plant and animal specimens being hoisted by helicopter power to return to laboratories for analysis may yet be able to tell us a bit more about our world as we (all of us are in Terramar of one sort or another) keep pushing into the fringes of the unknown to try to reclaim something of value that can be understood.