Arthur Conan Doyle published “The Lost World” in 1912.

He was already famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and the new novel would become almost equally famous in its own right — launching a genre of adventure fiction, creating characters that entered popular culture, and permanently associating the concept of a “lost world” isolated plateau with the tepui mountains of South America.

The plot of “The Lost World” involves an expedition to a remote South American plateau, accessible only by climbing sheer cliffs, where prehistoric creatures — including dinosaurs — have survived into the Edwardian present, cut off from the evolution of the surrounding world by the barriers of the cliffs.

The protagonist, the irascible Professor Challenger, leads the expedition and returns with proof that animals thought extinct for tens of millions of years are still living on the isolated plateau.