Unknown continent revealed between Europe, Asia, Africa

Scientists have identified a low-lying continent that existed about 40 million years ago and was inhabited by exotic animals.

According to Science Alert, the mysterious continent between Europe, Africa and Asia is named Balkanatolia.

It was previously hypothesized about a land bridge connecting this Asia and Southeast Europe when sea levels dropped about 34 million years ago. At the time, the world witnessed an extinction event of native mammals of Western Europe, but then Asian mammals quickly took their place.

Pictures of the lost continent

But new evidence suggests that Asian animals may have been present in Europe 5-10 million years earlier.

Scientists began to suspect the presence of a mysterious continent. To investigate, filter paleontologist Alexis Licht and colleagues from the French National Center for Scientific Research examined fossil evidence in the area that includes the present-day Balkan peninsula and Anatolia, the western overhang of the Asia.

They identified these two points as buffer points for the mysterious, more ancient migration mentioned above.

Research continues to reverse the flow of time, discovering that the Balkanatolia archipelago disappeared 50 million years ago. It is an archipelago separate from the continents, bringing together many exotic animals distinct from both Europe and East Asia.

Then, sea level declines, growing Antarctic ice sheets and tectonic shifts combined to transform Balkanatolia into a continent connecting the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. That was when Asian mammals invaded Balkanatolia and later migrated to Southeast Europe.

Research has yet to show when this lost continent actually sank into the ocean. The authors also note that the existence of the Balkanatolia continent is only based on a clean chemical record, still needing geological evidence to confirm it.