A World Of Undiscovered Places Long After Columbus, There's Still Room For Exploration. And Challenges Aplenty.

That Christopher Columbus did not "discover" America does not diminish his achievement. He sailed uncharted seas and reached a land he wasn't certain would be there. He changed history.

Five centuries after his legendary voyage, he remains the quintessential explorer: driven, almost obsessed, overcoming daunting obstacles, risking his life in the quest to be the first.

Certainly that spirit remains alive today. But is there anyplace on Earth left to use it?

Absolutely.

There are still plenty of unclimbed mountains to ascend, unexplored jungles to slog through, dark caves to descend into and strange places to visit for the first time. In addition, millions of plant and animal species remain to be discovered - possibly even a 200-foot-long squid living thousands of leagues beneath the sea.

"There is not too much terra incognita left," said Priit Vesilind, senior assistant editor for expeditions at the National Geographic Magazine. "But there are still many, many challenges that remain."

Jim Fowler, who has visited many of the world's wilderness areas during his 30 years on television's Wild Kingdom, agrees.

"I think there are still an awful lot of opportunities for modern-day explorers," he said. "But the nature of exploration has changed. In the past it meant that you had to be the first person to get to a place or be the first to experience something. Some of that is still possible. But the real challenges for exploration are in understanding how the natural world works. In a very real sense, today's explorers are scientists."

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The greatest challenge for explorers lies beneath the sea. Oceans cover 71 percent of the planet, but their depths remain explored largely by the imagination. New vistas also wait in Antarctica, the Arctic, Siberia, tropical rain forests, southern Chile, the interior of the Earth and other remote regions.

For those who remain skeptical, consider this:

During the last year, scientists have discovered the largest living thing on the planet (a 1,500-acre fungus living beneath the ground in Washington State); found a "lost world" teeming with new species of birds, fish and a dagger-horned mammal in a remote area of Vietnam; and used satellites to find the fabled lost city of Ubar, a 5,000-year-old civilization buried beneath the sands of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula.