Simon Tyssot de Patot (1655–1738) was a French writer and poet during the Age of Enlightenment who penned two very important, seminal works in fantastic literature.
While the book did not range much beyond the confines of the traditional Utopias of the times, it did, however, include "living fossils," giant birds and strange flora that survived from prehistoric eras, arguably making it one of the first modern Lost World novels.
Tyssot de Patot's book predates that of Danish writer Ludvig Holberg Niels Klim's Underground Travels (1741) and Jules Verne's classic Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864).
Tyssot de Patot described how his protagonists discover a hidden, underground kingdom located near the North Pole.
That kingdom is inhabited by the descendants of African colonists who had left their homeland four thousand years earlier.