'Lost continent' the size of Greenland found under Europe

A hidden continent that was partially plunged into the earth has been uncovered by scientists – with some of the land mass still visible today.

Researchers from Utrecht University have revealed a piece of continental crust, named Greater Adria for the Adriatic region it settled in, broke away from North Africa more than 200 million years ago.

Much of the territory was plunged into the earth’s mantle, however some of the landmass has remained visible – making up a strip of land across Italy that stretches from Turin in the north to Puglia in the south.

“Forget Atlantis” principal researcher Douwe van Hinsbergen said, “without realising it, vast numbers of tourists spend their holiday each year on the lost continent of Greater Adria.”

According to the paper published in the journal Gondwana Research, the land mass separated from North Africa more than 200million years ago before being shifted along the complex system of tectonic plates that make up the Mediterranean region.

“It is quite simply a geological mess” Mr van Hinsbergen added, “everything is curved, broken, and stacked. Compared to this, the Himalayas, for example, represent a rather simple system. There you can follow several large fault lines across a distance of more than 2000 km.’

Much of the rest of the remaining mass sank below the waters to the west of the country, covered by coral reefs, shallow seas and sediments. Those sediments went on to form rocks, which in turn were scraped off as the continent sank beneath tectonic plates leaving mountain ranges in the Alps, Apennines, Balkans, Greece and Turkey.

The vast stretch of land covered by the continent meant the region's history required further unpicking by scientists, who combatted with each nation’s understanding of the geological backstory as they mapped its evolution from the Triassic period.

Mr van Hinsbergen said: “This is not only a large region, but it also hosts more than 30 countries. Each of these has its own geological survey, own maps, and own ideas about the evolutionary history.

“Research often stops at the national borders. Therefore, the region is not just fragmented from a geological perspective.”

It is not the first time lost land masses have been discovered. In 2017 researchers from South Africa's University of Witwatersrand found the island of Mauritius was sitting on top of an undiscovered fragment of the 200-million-year-old "super-continent" Gondwana, which split to form Africa, South America, Antarctica, India and Australia about 180 million years ago.

New Zealand was also found to have been sitting on top of a much larger mass dubbed Zealandia - most of which sits underneath the South Pacific and so can’t be seen, according to researchers from the nation’s official geological body GNS Science.