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A lost continent is not quite as lost as it used to be. Scientists have painstakingly fit together spread across Europe to unravel the story of Greater Adria, reports Live Science. This continent was about the size of Greenland when it rushed into southern Europe about 120 million years ago and did not live on the tale. Adria essentially slid beneath Europe, but the process was not quite that simple. Here's how Robin George Andrews of National Geographic puts it: "As it was in the hellish depths of the mantle, the top layer of the continent was scraped away, as if a titan were peeling a colossal apple." The good news for geologists is that "apple peel" can be found today in the Adriatic Sea and across more than 30 nations from Spain to Iran, per Science.
While the existence of Greater Adria has been known for some time, the new study Gondwana Research is the result of 10 years of research and is the most detailed account of what happened. Not helping? "The Mediterranean region is quite simply a geological mess," says lead author Douwe van Hinsbergen of Utrecht University, Science. "Everything is curved, broken, and stacked." While Adria existed, it was considered that it was more than a solid land mass. Researchers say it came into existence about 240 million years ago when it broke out of the supercontinent of Gondwana. This "mother" continent had other spinoffs that we did manage to survive: We know them as Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, and India, by Smithsonian. (Is there an eighth continent on the way?)
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