Anna Lagos: How did you come across Valeriana by accident? What initially caught your attention in the lidar data? Luke Auld-Thomas: It was both deliberate and accidental. The mapping project was undertaken in 2013 by a group of ecologists who were mapping ...

Archaeologists have found thousands of Maya structures and a lost city they named Valeriana in Mexico by using laser mapping technology, according to a new study.

Using lidar technology, researchers surveyed 50 square miles of Campeche, Mexico, discovering an entire previously unknown city of the Maya empire.

Archeologists have discovered an ancient Mayan city named Valeriana in Mexico's Campeche jungle. This urban settlement prompts a reevaluation of Mayan settlement density. Using Lidar technology, researchers identified 6,

Luke Auld-Thomas spotted the ancient Maya site in Campeche, overlooked by Mexican scientists, from old lidar data he was browsing on Google.

Archeologists in Mexico have discovered a huge, lost Mayan city, which they named Valeriana, hidden deep in the southern jungle of Campeche -- a sprawling, urban settlement, replete with architectural marvels and agricultural infrastructure.

East of the town of Dos Lagunas, past the major highway cutting through Mexico’s south, the forest rises up in a dense wall of grasping roots, spindly branches and veils of brown and green. Beyond it lies the ruins of an old Maya city,

Tulane researchers uncovered over 6,500 Maya structures in Mexico using lidar, revealing a complex settlement landscape and challenging previous assumptions about the Maya civilization’s urban and rural distribution.