Lost World

Named after The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this is a geographic location that remains off all maps and unknown to the general population. They are usually found in remote locations, such as the center of large and barely explored continents (like Darkest Africa or The Amazon Rainforest), the polar ice caps, or mysterious islands. They are often home to lost civilizations with amazing Lost Technology, or to prehistoric animals that have managed to survive unchanged — aside from the fact that they suddenly find humans delicious. Some Lost Worlds are almost ludicrously dangerous and populated by fearsome monsters, and still others are Magical Lands where All Myths Are True. Prone to being destroyed by volcanic eruptions, floods, quakes, and/or bombs at the end of the book/film/series, with the protagonists barely escaping. Besides islands, jungles, isolated plateaus and the frozen poles of the Earth, the Lost World can exist in even more mysterious places, such as outer space, the bottom of the ocean, or deep within the planet itself — jungle-filled caverns in a Fantastic Underworld are a common holdout of primordial life, and dinosaurs are likewise a common sight in the Hollow World. Modern stories in particular tend to place their Lost Worlds in such remote places to justify their having gone undiscovered. Modern works that use this trope are usually set in a previous time, or use Applied Phlebotinum to Hand Wave how the area has remained undetected by modern technology. Examples include A Wizard Did It, or the location is contained in a Pocket Dimension. C. S. Lewis went so far as to argue that much Science Fiction, especially of the softer varieties, could be considered Lost World stories Recycled In Space since too much of our planet has been explored in the present day to make them plausible on Earth. As such it often figures in the Planetary Romance sub-genre. A downplayed version of this can happen in Real Life, when the Lost World had been isolated for millennia due to some geological feature which makes travel in and out too bothersome to attempt: the 3 miles wide crater of Mount Bosavi is a textbook case, as it had been thoroughly explored just in 2009, which ended with discovery of at least forty previously undescribed species. May contain a City of Gold. Overlaps with Hollow World, with the internal and external surfaces losing knowledge of each other. City in a Bottle can happen as well, if the Lost World is cut off from the outside world. A staple of Two-Fisted Tales and Jungle Opera.