Lost Lands Found by Scientists

A lost continent off the coast of Brazil may have been found, scientists announced this week.

Granite boulders dredged from the seafloor off the coast of South America two years ago could be remnants of a long-vanished continent, according to Roberto Ventura Santos, the geology director of Brazil’s Geology Service.

“This could be the Brazilian Atlantis,” Santos told reporters, adding that he was speaking metaphorically and not claiming to have found the legendary sunken world. “Obviously, we don’t expect to find a lost city in the middle of the Atlantic,” he said.

Santos and his team speculated that the granite—a relatively low-density rock found in continental crust—belonged to a continent that was submerged when Africa and South America drifted apart and formed the Atlantic Ocean about 100 million years ago. Read more.