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.

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

Archaeologists have revealed an ancient lost Mayan city using advanced laser mapping technology, unearthing monumental structures such as pyramids and plazas. Named Valeriana, the city is believed to have been founded before 150 AD.

Using cutting-edge laser mapping tech, archeologists have uncovered a lost Mayan city in the jungles of southern Mexico. As detailed in a new study published in the journal Antiquity, a team of scientists led by Tulane University PhD student Luke Auld-Thomas,

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

Lidar technology uncovers ancient Maya city Valeriana in Yucatán Peninsula, revealing thousands of structures.

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.