About Us

Auyán-tepui is one of the largest of Venezuela's tepuis — the flat-topped “table mountains” of the Guiana Highlands, built from some of the oldest exposed rock on Earth. In the language of the indigenous Pemón people, tepui means “mountain”; and because they saw its cloud-wrapped summit as a dwelling place of spirits, Auyán came to be known as the “Mountain of the Devil.” From its rim, Angel Falls — the world's tallest waterfall — drops 979 metres.

Cut off from the world below for millions of years, each tepui has evolved like an island in the sky. They shelter life found nowhere else on Earth — carnivorous sun-pitcher plants (Heliamphora), rare orchids and bromeliads, and small black “pebble toads” that escape predators by tucking in their limbs and rolling down the rock.

This same otherworldly isolation inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World, in which Professor Challenger leads an expedition to a remote plateau where prehistoric life still survives.

We took our name from Auyán because it reflects our work: reaching the remote and hard to observe, and turning it into clear, reliable knowledge. And like the life that exists nowhere but these summits, the data and insight we cultivate are rare, hard-won, and our own — a body of intelligence you will not find anywhere else.