After a week of intensive fieldwork, the team of speleologists and researchers involved in the “Beyond the Falls” project has returned to Georgetown. The project focuses on the study of the speleogenetic processes that led to the formation of the Kumerau Falls, along the Kurupung River in Guyana’s Region 7.

Led by Francesco Sauro, speleologist and geologist at the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padua, the team successfully located, surveyed, and documented a cave developed within the quartz arenites of the Roraima Supergroup, first reported in 1976 by British speleologists Helen Sergeant and Jim Davis. The cave proved to be of great scientific interest due to the presence of silica speleothems and a distinctive cave-dwelling fauna. In addition, the researchers identified a second cave, extending for approximately 200 meters.

The data collected — including chemical analyses of water and different lithologies — will allow the development of a speleogenetic model to better understand the formation of the massive cliff, one of the largest of its kind in the world, that characterizes the waterfall.

The project was coordinated by La Venta Association, in close collaboration with the Department of Geography of the University of Guyana and the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padua. The expedition was carried out with the support of the Guyana Tourism Authority and under the supervision of the Environmental Protection Agency of Guyana.

The results will be presented in a final report, which will also include proposals for the conservation and protection of this extraordinary natural environment.