First appearance: A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre)
Author/Creator: Jules Verne
Media: Novel
Year: 1864
Located: Earth's center
Plot/Premise: A German professor (Otto Lidenbrock in the original French, Professor Von Hardwigg in the most common English translation) believes there are volcanic tubes going toward the center of the Earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their guide Hans encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy. The living organisms they meet reflect geological time; just as the rock layers become older and older the deeper they travel, the animals become more and more ancient the closer the characters approach the center. They encounter no dinosaurs but while crossing the Lidenbrock Sea, they witness a battle between an Ichthyosaurus and a Plesiosaurus.

Adaptations: Films - 1959, 1976, 1978, 1989, 2008, 2008; TV series/ Miniseries/TV film, 1959, 1993, 1999, 2008; Radio play: 2000; Stage play: 2000; Video game: 2008; Music album: 1974; Park attraction: 2008

First appearance: A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
Author/Creator: James De Mille
Media: Novel
Year: 1888
Located: Earth's interior beneath Antarctica
Plot/Premise: Four sailors discover a copper cylinder containing a manuscript written by the adventurer Adam More, who was shipwrecked in the southern hemisphere. They read its contents out to one another, and the incredible story unfolds of his journey through a subterranean tunnel to a lost world of prehistoric animals, plants and people, all sustained by a natural volcanic heat despite the long Antarctic night. This strange utopian society, a lost world in which humans coexist with monstrous prehistoric animals (including plesiosaurs), is the antithesis of Victorian England, as poverty is preferred to wealth and darkness to light.

First appearance: Professor Antediluvius (Profesor Przedpotopowicz)
Author/Creator: Erazm Majewski
Media: Novel
Year: 1898
Located: Earth's interior beneath Bosnia
Plot/Premise: Entering a crevice in the earth in Bosnia three explorers climb down through a series of caverns containing the earth's geological ages.

First appearance: The Lost Continent
Author/Creator: C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
Media: Novel
Year: 1900
Located: A continent in the mid-Atlantic
Plot/Premise: In the last decadent years of Atlantis the evil queen Phorenice is voracious and cruel, and Deucalion, ostensibly the upholder of duty and tradition, is morally ambiguous. The barbarians are literally at the gate. Into this mix dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mammoths all survive. There is a tragic love triangle, evil sorcery, lots of swordplay, and a rousing naval battle.

First appearance: Beyond the great south wall: the secret of the Antarctic
Author/Creator: Frank Savile
Media: Novel
Year: 1901
Located: Antarctica
Plot/Premise: An expedition to the Antarctic searches for the lost treasures of the Mayans. The explorers encounter Cay, a dinosaur worshipped by the Mayans.

First appearance: Le Peuple du Pôle (The People of the Pole)
Author/Creator: Charles Derennes
Media: Novel
Year: 1907
Located: Secret valley at the North Pole
Plot/Premise: During an expedition to the North Pole, French aeronauts Jean-Louis de Venasque and Jacques Ceintras stumble upon an alien society of technologically-advanced reptilian humanoids living in a secret enclave that has been isolated from the world for millions of years. Archaic forms also persist in the form of "gigantic and bipedal reptiles."
Sequels/Other appearances: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Alan Moore)

First appearance: The Lost World
Author/Creator: Arthur Conan Doyle
Media: Novel
Year: 1912
Located: Inaccessible plateau in the Amazon basin
Plot/Premise: The Lost World chronicles an expedition led by Professor Challenger to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where dinosaurs and other extinct creatures still survive.

The pterodactyl swamp

Sequels/Other appearances: Frankenstein in the Lost World (Don Glut, 1971); Return to the Lost World (Nicholas Nye, 1991); Dinosaur Summer (of sorts) (Greg Bear, 1998)
Adaptations: The Lost World (Film, 1925); The Lost World (Film, 1960); The Lost World (Film, 1992); The Lost World (Film, 1998); Return to the Lost World (Film, 1992); "The Lost World" (TV miniseries, 2001), Sir Author Conan Doyle’s The Lost World – (TV movie and series, 1999-2002), Forgotten Futures III: George E. Challenger's Mysterious World, Torg

First appearance: At the Earth's Core
Author/Creator: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Media: Novel
Year: 1914
Located: Earth's interior
Plot/Premise: Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth milieu invented by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. In a notable crossover event between Burroughs' series, there is a Tarzan story in which the Ape Man finds his way into Pellucidar. Pellucidar is populated by primitive people and prehistoric creatures, notably dinosaurs.
Sequels/Other appearances: Pellucidar (1915); Tanar of Pellucidar (1929); Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929); Back to the Stone Age (1937); Return to Pellucidar (1941); Land of Terror (1944); Savage Pellucidar (1963); John Eric Holmes: Mahars of Pellucidar (1976), Red Axe of Pellucidar (1993)
Adaptations: At the Earth's Core (Film, 1976)

First appearance: The Land That Time Forgot
Author/Creator: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Media: Novel
Year: 1918
Located: An island near Antarctica
Plot/Premise: In the first novel, Caprona is described as a land mass near Antarctica, first reported by the (fictitious) Italian explorer Caproni in 1721, the location of which was subsequently lost. The island is ringed by high cliffs, making it inaccessible to all but the most intrepid explorers. It has a tropical river teeming with primitive creatures extinct elsewhere and a thermal inland sea, essentially a huge crater lake, whose heat sustains Caprona’s tropical climate. The island is also called Caspak by its native humanoid inhabitants.
Sequels/Other appearances: The People that Time Forgot (1918); Out of Time's Abyss (1918)
Adaptations: The Land That Time Forgot (Film, 1975), The People That Time Forgot (1977), The Land That Time Forgot (Film, 2009)

First appearance: Ghost of Slumber Mountain
Author/Creator: Willis O'Brien
Media: Film
Year: 1918
Located: Peak of Slumber Mountain at the edge of the Valley of Dreams
Plot/Premise: The spirit of the mountain hermit Mad Dick provides tale-spinner Uncle Jack with a time-viewing telescope. Through this Jack is able to see dinosaurs eating and fighting among themselves.