Researchers are trading in the Missouri woods to explore secrets in the Amazon rainforest.
ST. LOUIS — Forest Park is far from the Amazon rainforest, but that’s where 5 On Your Side met research archaeologists Dr. Daniel Pierce and Chris Bodine.
While both call Springfield home working at Missouri State, they both have St. Louis roots. Dr. Pierce grew up near Arnold and Bodine lived in Tower Grove while he went to St. Louis University.
Together, Pierce and Bodine formed the Terra Incognita Research Institute. In their lab, they’ve identified clues to what may be hidden in the vines and canopy of the jungle.
“We’ve found some large manmade features like geometric designs,” Pierce said, “evidence of a large-scale permanent settlement of a complex civilization that nobody knew was there.”
Using LiDAR, the team has identified possible roads, buildings and trails.
“LiDAR is a sensor that you attach to an airplane or a drone and it shoots laser pulses towards the surface of the earth,” explained Bodine. He says LiDAR can be used to make highly detailed maps, “with different codes and you can remove the trees or the leaves or the buildings and leave just the bare ground and it allows you to see what is underneath the trees.”
Virtually peeling away the forest, Pierce and Bodine think they’ve found a lost city the Amazon. Now they have to prove it.
“Somewhere in the middle of the Amazon,” Bodine outlined the expedition, “then up the river several hundred miles, then once we get up the river we’re going to go into the jungle several more miles and try and confirm what we’ve seen through satellite imagery.”
The goal and dream for Pierce is “to be the first to ever identify an entire culture that lived there.”
Bodine says the mission goes beyond bragging rights: “For the native peoples in Brazil in particular and the Amazon, because of the rubber tappers and the illegal loggers, it’s a way for them to prove they have sovereignty over the land, that they were there and they own it and that they own the rights to the land.”
If proven, their discovery could also rewrite world history.
“The Amazon probably didn’t exist in the form it exists today and it may have looked more like Missouri,” theorized Bodine.
Pierce and Bodine are working with limited research dollars and have started a crowd funding campaign to complete their expedition.
