The idea of Atlantis comes from Plato, who 2,000 years ago wrote of a mighty empire beneath the waves following a series of “excessively violent earthquakes and floods”.
While it has since become largely a source of inspiration for science fiction, it appears there is more truth to it than Plato himself likely knew.
The full extent of one such lost continent, known as Greater Adria, has finally been revealed by scientists.
Douwe van Hinsbergen, a geologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands has been studying rocks around and beneath the Mediterranean Sea with his colleagues to understand just how huge the now-hidden continent is.
The size was documented in a paper published in early September in the journal Gondwana Research.
Mr van Hinsbergen wrote: “It’s enormous! About the size and rough shape as Greenland.”
The continent is totally buried after it collided with Europe roughly 140 million years ago.
Greater Adria was bulldozed and buried in the smash, and for the most part sank beneath what is now Italy, Greece and the Baltics.
But other studies reveal that Greater Adria is far from the only lost continent.
Analysis of ancient rocks suggests that almost all of Earth’s earliest continents might have disappeared, with an enormous amount of history lost with them.
However, they left traces behind that are visible today.
Mr van Hinsbergen noticed that rocks from Greater Adria form part of the Alps after being scraped off in the collision.
Meanwhile, whole chunks got embedded in southern Italy and Croatia.
And the continent contributed to Greek and Roman life.
Under tremendous heat and pressure and over tens of millions of years, limestone rocks from Greater Adria turned into marble.
Friction between Greater Adria and Europe then pulled the sunken rocks back to the surface, where people found them and mined them.
Mr van Hinsbergen said: “That’s where the marble came from that the Romans and the Greeks used for their temples.”
