Researchers discovered a hidden continent on Earth, but it's not Atlantis. They found it while reconstructing the evolution of Mediterranean region's complex geology, which rises with mountain ranges and dips with seas.
The continent is called Greater Adria. It's the size of Greenland and it broke off from North Africa, only to be buried under Southern Europe about 140 million years ago. And chances are you've been there without even knowing it. "Forget Atlantis," said Douwe van Hinsbergen, the study author and professor at Utrecht University. "Without realizing it, vast numbers of tourists spend their holiday each year on the lost continent of Greater Adria." This area is called Adria by geologists, so the researchers for this study refer to the previously undiscovered continent as Greater Adria.
Most of Greater Adria was underwater, covered by shallow seas, coral reefs and sediments (沉淀物). The sediments formed rocks and those rocks became mountain ranges in these areas: the Alps, the Apennines, the Balkans and Greece. The researchers found that Greater Adria started to become its own continent about 240 million years ago.
This isn't the first time a lost continent has been found. In January 2017, researchers announced the discovery of a lost continent left over from the supercontinent Gondwana, which began breaking apart 200 million years ago. The leftover (剩余的) piece, which was covered in lava (岩浆), is now under Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. And in September 2017, a different research team found the lost continent of Zealandia through ocean drilling in the South Pacific. It's two-thirds of a mile beneath the sea.
Greater Adria isn't the first lost continent to be found. But if research in past years shows anything, it likely won't be the last discovery.
