Have you ever heard of Greater Adria? Chances are you havent.
It is (or rather, was) a lost continent roughly the size of Greenland that has just been discovered in southern Europe.
Evidence of its existence has just been released in the scientific journal Gondwana Research, which suggests that Adria was a giant landmass that first split from what is now France, Spain and North Africa.
Sadly, shifting tectonic plates pulled the former continent down into the depths of the Earths subduction zones (where our planet forces one slab of crust on top of the other) and Adria was no more.
Most of it was destroyed in the Earths super hot mantle, but what remains is surprisingly still very visible today.
Rewind back to the glory days of school and you may recall how the mystical things we call mountains are formed. Many of the worlds great mountainous regions, including the likes of the Alps, Andes and Canadian Rockies, were formed as a result of the Earths tectonic plates smashing together.
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For the sake of a quick science recap, when two tectonic plates converge, their edges can crumple and create huge slabs of rock that are eventually forced through the Earths crust and form, you guessed it, a mountain.
Fascinatingly, the tectonic remnants of Adria went on to form all the incredible mountains you now see piercing the sky in the Alps, Balkans, Greece, Italy and Turkey.
So, why did it take scientists so long to discover it?
Europes geological structure is just as complex as its politics. Evidence of the former continents existence is spread over some 30 countries and mapping it proved to be an extremely complex task that encompassed several mapping and data techniques from scientists all over the Eurasian plate.
The success of the latest find is thanks to a decades worth of research which included technological, geological and geophysical data from across the region.
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In addition to discovering it, scientists and geologists also found other remains of Greater Adria from rocky relicRead More – Source
