Recent research shows that more than 200 million years ago, Greece was part of a lost continent scientists call “Greater Adria.”

According to a decade-long study coordinated by Utrecht University, a piece of continental shelf the size of Greenland, once separated off from today’s North Africa then submerged itself under the earth’s mantle under what is today southern Europe.

Scientists have now reconstructed the evolutionary history of the mountain ranges and seas in the region. In order to achieve this, geologists from various countries studied all the mountains ranges from Spain to Iran in detail for ten years, concluding that a large piece of North Africa’s continental shelf plunged into the earth’s mantle under today’s Southern Europe.

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According to the head of the research team, Douwe van Hinsbergen, Professor of Global Tectonics and Paleogeography at Utrecht University, most of the mountain ranges of this area originated from a single continent that separated off from North Africa more than 200 million years ago.

Read more: Greek Reporter