Cueva del Fantasma

February 22, 2006 12:13 PM

Researchers have discovered a cave so large two helicopters can comfortably land inside it and containing a new species of poison dart frog.
posted by driveler (56 comments total)

cool
posted by edgeways at 12:20 PM on February 22, 2006

The article says actually, it's not a cave

I will add this to the long list of disappointments I have endured today
posted by poppo at 12:22 PM on February 22, 2006

Holy gazookas !
posted by elpapacito at 12:22 PM on February 22, 2006

Looks like a cave, anyway. I eagerly await when they discover Professor Challenger's half-indian descendants and the thunder lizards.
posted by JeremyT at 12:23 PM on February 22, 2006

¡Cueva del Fantasma! I love that name.
posted by furiousthought at 12:25 PM on February 22, 2006

One of my pet peeves is diminishing by understatement. Looking at the size of the helicopters, I would say easily 20 of them could fly inside of it.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:25 PM on February 22, 2006

Its always nice to see prestine places like this. I must do more travelling.
posted by Trakker at 12:26 PM on February 22, 2006

Great, that's all we need, another poison animal. I hope we can at least use it to cure cancer.
posted by a47danger at 12:27 PM on February 22, 2006

Its always nice to see prestine places like this. I must do more travelling.

Too bad this particular place has just been screwed up by helicopter exhaust.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:30 PM on February 22, 2006

I was gonna say "meh," but then I saw that, in fact, the cave is so immense that two helicopters look like little poison dart frogs themselves in relation to it. Very cool.
posted by OmieWise at 12:31 PM on February 22, 2006

I hope it's a poison that kills in a very cool way, at the very least. Like, the victim's blood should explode.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:32 PM on February 22, 2006

Finally a place where I can safely park Airwolf
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 12:36 PM on February 22, 2006

Know I know what a newborn sees.
posted by HTuttle at 12:37 PM on February 22, 2006

No picture of the Fantasma. What a rip-off.
posted by zonkout at 12:42 PM on February 22, 2006

Htuttle, you made me spit my pudding.
posted by davejay at 12:44 PM on February 22, 2006

and that's not a euphamism for anything
posted by davejay at 12:44 PM on February 22, 2006

It looks like someone made this in a 3d modeling program. i mean, who could verify it? where does all the water from the water fall go? into that little pond? how did they find it and then convince someone to fly not one, but two helicopters out there?

it was you, wasn't it?

ehh, all that aside, i would go.
posted by nearo at 12:46 PM on February 22, 2006

I would say easily 20 of them could fly inside of it

This is journamalism. They have standards. Can't report big enough for 20 unless it's actually been done!

poppo had it, though. I immediately pegged this as not-a-cave when I saw the photo.
posted by dhartung at 12:50 PM on February 22, 2006

What would really be cool is if the cave was actually a large mouth and it clamped shut suddenly, eating both helicopters.
posted by NationalKato at 12:50 PM on February 22, 2006

On live TV.
posted by NationalKato at 12:50 PM on February 22, 2006

those would be some pretty swank digs if I was a caveman.
posted by delmoi at 12:52 PM on February 22, 2006

I bet its innards are riddled with mynocks.
posted by Gator at 12:53 PM on February 22, 2006

In my day, we had to drive cars into caves. And we liked it, because it was all we had.
posted by drezdn at 12:58 PM on February 22, 2006

I actually gasped upon looking at the picture. In case you can't see the helicopters at first, look for the light-colored twigs.
posted by odinsdream at 12:59 PM on February 22, 2006

it isn’t really a cave, but a huge, collapsed, steep gorge.

Huh, ok. What's the definition of 'cave' and 'gorge'? I mean isn't a gorge a big vertical rock hole, a mountain a big rock pile, and a cave a big horizontal rock hole? /ig'nant>
posted by dgaicun at 1:02 PM on February 22, 2006

I love how LiveScience and Space.com both use $_GET for their captions.
posted by brownpau at 1:06 PM on February 22, 2006

Never mind the helicopters, let's land the Gimli Glider in there.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 1:08 PM on February 22, 2006

Whatever that frog is sitting on... it looked at first like... oh nevermind.
posted by hal9k at 1:08 PM on February 22, 2006

it looked at first like... oh nevermind.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought that. (What the hell is it sitting on, anyway?)
posted by Gator at 1:11 PM on February 22, 2006

It's a rock with a leaf stem stuck to it you sick bastards.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:15 PM on February 22, 2006

You use the helicopter as a unit of measurement, and yet you say metric is strange?
posted by The Monkey at 1:18 PM on February 22, 2006

¡Cueva de la Pene-rana!
posted by dgaicun at 1:25 PM on February 22, 2006

The question is... can we find untapped oil reserves there?
posted by thefreek at 1:28 PM on February 22, 2006

.
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:32 PM on February 22, 2006

Batman should totally live there.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:33 PM on February 22, 2006

That would be stupid. This cave is way too far away from Gotham City.
posted by jefbla at 1:39 PM on February 22, 2006

Wasn't there a show in the 80s that had some secret helicopter that they kept in a cave or volcano or something?
posted by b_thinky at 1:40 PM on February 22, 2006

Team America had a helicopter in their cave, come to think of it.
posted by Gator at 1:45 PM on February 22, 2006

Airwolf had an underground bunker, I think, though considerably less impressive than this.
posted by slatternus at 1:47 PM on February 22, 2006

look out for Sleestacks
posted by Gungho at 1:58 PM on February 22, 2006

Batman is rich enough to import whatever damn cave he wants.
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:02 PM on February 22, 2006

Know I know what a newborn sees.

Helicopters?

Wasn't there some joke... "If you can help me find my car keys, we can drive outta here!"
posted by pracowity at 2:24 PM on February 22, 2006

Wait a minute, how the does the frog fit in the cave? I've got both photos open in my browser and the frog looks way bigger...
posted by ob at 2:58 PM on February 22, 2006

Airwolf DID have an underground bunker, but it was accessible through the top of the cave. {/nerd}
posted by TeamBilly at 3:43 PM on February 22, 2006

(Here's a large shot of the Aprada Tepui plateau where the 250 meter tall helicopter "cave" was found.)

Another notable true cave in the same region of Venezuelan tepuis is Cueva Charles Brewer, the world's largest known quartzite cave (over 4,400 meters long):

The cave galleries have a typical width of 40 meters and can reach up to 60 meters in places where the floor is covered with huge breakdown, some the size of buildings. The biggest space found in the cave has been Gran Galería Karen y Fanny, with a dome to 40 meters height and measuring more than 355 meters long.

As the walls are 70 meters apart, the volume of this area has been estimated in 400,000 m3. (The second largest space is 320,000 m3 at the Gran Galería de los Guácharos, near the entrance.) The rest of the great spaces inside the cave consists of canyons where the smallest profiles reaches 15 x 20 meters. These passages are very dynamic in terms of water movement and is where beautiful waterfalls and rapids are found. Due to this fact, these are the most hazardous segments of the cave.

One of the most interesting features of the main gallery is its straightness, showing few bends or parallel galleries. The general disposition of the cave is that of being parallel to the top of the mountain and running 150 to 200 meters below the surface. Inside the cave, there are some red mud terraces, beatiful sandy beaches with ripple-marked sand, small marmits filled with quartz-polished lentils, some clean walls and others ridged with lateral ledges, columns, and rock bridges.

Other spectacular CCB pictures can be seen here. The cave is named after its discoverer, Charles Brewer-Carías, a controversial Venezuelan explorer and Doyle look-alike (who also took the helicopter cave shot.)
posted by cenoxo at 4:53 PM on February 22, 2006

LOL brownpau.
posted by smackfu at 4:58 PM on February 22, 2006

dgaicun, definitions abound. One is along the lines of, "Big enough for a man to enter, deep or long enoug to get dark in the daytime." By that one, it's a cave (unless it's Photoshopped, of course).
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:00 PM on February 22, 2006

That's Kong's cave.
posted by stbalbach at 5:09 PM on February 22, 2006

I hope we can at least use it to cure cancer.

I was just hoping we could get high from it, but I guess curing cancer would be cool, too.
posted by 2sheets at 5:16 PM on February 22, 2006

I expect we'll shortly be devoured en masse by an Ancient Evil roused from its eons-long slumber by the careless actions of these plucky-but-naïve scientists, who will scoff at the possibility that the horrible screaming sounds and mysterious disappearances are anything unusual until it's far too late.

Thanks a lot, guys.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 5:47 PM on February 22, 2006

You are right, IshmaelGraves. We are all doomed. Why must scientists study everything!
posted by TwelveTwo at 6:51 PM on February 22, 2006

I will add this to the long list of disappointments I have endured today

I'm not sure why, but that made me spew wine out of my nose when I read that.

But, those photo's are gorgeous. Lush greenery soothes the grey-dreary-Toronto-winter addled soul.
posted by generichuman at 7:45 PM on February 22, 2006

How do we know they're not really toy helecopters, like 2 inches (5cms) across?
posted by ParisParamus at 7:54 PM on February 22, 2006

they don't even look like helicopters
posted by ParisParamus at 7:56 PM on February 22, 2006

generichuman, a shitty lowrez JPEG of a chia pet makes for better scenery than Toronto's skyline this time of year. My sympathies.
posted by slatternus at 8:01 PM on February 22, 2006

Yeah, it was Airwolf. Good call.
posted by b_thinky at 12:54 AM on February 23, 2006