"For a scientist, there is nothing more exciting to go find the pieces of a puzzle," he tells BBC Juan Carlos Fernandez Diaz, Doctor of Engineering Systems and Remote Sensing Remote Sensing at the University of Houston, USA.
The first piece was discovered when he was doing his doctorate and realized that one of the techniques he was studying might be the most suitable to find the mythical, elusive and so-called "White City" in Honduras , which for years has been subject research.
The other came in 2012 when he finally managed to fly over La Mosquitia, a vast and remote region covered with swamps, rivers and mountains in the east, and found the alleged city, which is actually a set of multiple extended settlements along square kilometers of forest that have remained intact for at least 600 years.
How was the team which included Fernandez Diaz managed to find this place, part of a little-known pre-Columbian culture?
With lidar (short for Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging), a technology originated in the 60s and now is revolutionizing the world of archeology. It is also used for other things, such as the measurement of ozone or 3D survey of the environment for autonomous vehicles .
