Watch: How Google Earth helped find Mozambique's lost forest of Mount Mabu

In a time and on a planet where we think we know everything, Kew Gardens scientists used Google Earth to identify a lost world perched on a lonely mountain in Africa

Forest of Mount Mabu in Mozambique, Africa. (Credit: Tom Timberlake / Kew Royal Botanical Gardens.)

Deep within the heart of the African nation of Mozambique there stands a mountain. Unknown to scientists and mostly undisturbed by humans since, well, since perhaps the dawn of our species, this mysterious mountain, clothed in dense green virgin rainforest, rises up from a golden ocean of savannah. In addition to the ecological isolation by the surrounding savannah, the mountain is isolated due to political events; the civil war that ravaged parts of Mozambique from 1977 to 1992 also helped preserve this area, untouched.