The Lost Balkanatolia: A Forgotten Continent from 40 Million Years Ago

According to recent study, a low-lying landmass that flourished 40 million years ago, which was also rich to diverse wildlife; might just have laid the route for Asian animals to reach southern Europe.

The Forgotten Continent - Balkanatolia

Wedged amid Europe, Africa, and Asia, this vanished peninsula, called Balkanatolia by experts has established a bridge connecting Asia and Europe some 34 million years ago, when ocean levels plummeted and a network of roads emerged, as per Science Alert.

In latest research published by palaeogeologist Alexis Licht and his associates, experts confirmed that how and when the first wave of Asian animals arrived in south-eastern Europe persists unknown.

However, the end product has been anything less of spectacular. While new Asian animals developed, in what is today regarded as the Grand Coupure during the near conclusion of the Eocene period, approximately 34 million years ago, thousands of indigenous creatures vanished from Western Europe.

Subsequent fossil discoveries in the Balkans, though, has derailed that timetable, alluding to an unusual bioregion that seems to have allowed Asian animals to overrun southeastern Europe 5 to 10 million years prior the Grande Coupure.

Re-examination of substantiation from across all recognized fossil facilities in the region, which includes the modern-day Balkan archipelago as well as Anatolia, Asia's westernmost protrusion was done by French National Centre for Scientific Investigation, Licht and peers in order to scrutinize. Given existing archeological evidence, the date of these settlements was altered, and the researchers recreated paleogeographic alterations that occurred in the territory, which has a historical background of intermittent flooding and re-emergence.

What they discovered implies that Balkanatolia provided as a staging post for living creatures migrating from Asia into western Europe, with the antiquated landmass' conversion from standalone peninsula to bring straight and colonization with Asian animal species, concurrent with some significant paleogeographic shifts.

The review discovered that over 50 million years ago, Balkanatolia was a disconnected island nation, detach from the surrounding landmasses, where a broad array of living creatures distinguishable from those of Europe and eastern Asia flourished.

Eventually, around 40 and 34 million years ago, a mixture of dropping coastal erosion, expanding Antarctic ice glaciers, and geological movements joined the Balkanatolia landmass to Western Europe.

Discovery of the Lost Continent from 40 Million Years Ago

According to the evolutionary history, this permitted Asian animals like as mice and four-legged hoofed species called ungulates to move westward and occupy Balkanatolia. Licht and associates added to that milestone by discovering parts of a rhinoceros-like animal's mandible at a fresh archaeological deposit in Turkey, which they calibrated to 38 to 35 million years ago.

In an article under Daily Mail, the specimen is perhaps the earliest Asian-like ungulate found in Anatolia to present, predating the Grande Coupure by at least 1.5 million years, implying that Asian animals were already on their way to Europe through Balkanatolia.

According to Licht and collaborators, this southern route to Europe across Balkanatolia may have been more appealing to daring species than relatively high pathways over Central Asia, which at the era were harsher, colder arid plains.

Even so, experts note in their publication that previous convergence among independent Balkanatolian archipelagos and the occurrence of this southern translocation pathway persist discussed. Furthermore, the narrative so far is only constructed on mammals' relics, and an extra detailed overview of previous Balkanatolian wildlife stays to be derived.

Several of the natural formations that led directly to Balkanatolia are still unknown, and it's crucial to remember that this assessment is based on the assessment of one group's archaeological evidence.

However, the geological evidence of mammals and other animals dwelling on archipelagos is typically limited and uneven. The study points out that Balkanatolia's extensive continental genetic evidence offers a great potential, to chronicle the development and extinction of archipelago biotas in geological history.