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Long ago, the Earth's present-day continents were connected in a single giant supercontinent called Pangea. Pangea then split into two parts: Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. The main landmasses of these two large continents became Europe, Asia, and North America. Meanwhile, other scattered landmasses formed present-day Africa, Antarctica, South America, and Australia.
In a recent scientific discovery, researchers have uncovered another continent that emerged from a portion of the larger continent of Gondwana. This new continent has been named Greater Adria and is considered the eighth continent alongside the present-day continents. Much of the landmass of the Adria continent lies directly beneath Europe.
The Greater Adria continent is identified on the map.
"The deepest parts of the Adriatic continent are currently located 1,500 kilometers beneath Greece," said research team leader Van Hinsbergen.
During his research, Professor Van Hinsbergen hypothesized that a geological force, sometime between 100 million and 120 million years ago, had gradually separated a landmass covering more than 2 million square kilometers.2(almost equivalent to the area of present-day Greenland) in southern Europe. This continent was half submerged in the ocean, but in the process, an uppermost layer broke off and rose up, forming the geological precursors to the large mountains in more than 30 European countries today, belonging to the Alps, Apennines, Balkans, Greece, and Türkiye.
Remnants of a lost continent can be seen in the Taurus Mountains, Türkiye.
Over 120 million years, the collision of Earth's tectonic plates forced Adria to lie dormant beneath the surface of Southern Europe. However, some fragments of Adria were not completely submerged beneath Europe. Instead, they rose to the surface and became part of present-day Italy (including cities like Turin and Venice), or the Istria region of Croatia.
Perhaps we've already set foot on this eighth continent while strolling through Italy.
In January 2017, researchers announced the discovery of a lost continent remaining from the supercontinent Gondwana. The remaining fragment, covered in lava, now lies beneath the landmass of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. In September 2017, another research team found the lost continent of Zealandia through ocean drilling in the South Pacific. Thus, Greater Adria is not the first lost continent to be found, and it certainly won't be the last.
