Lemuria

Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical Lost Continent, believed to have once existed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The concept's 10th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography; however, the concept of Lemuria has been rendered obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics. Although sunken continents do exist, such as Zealandia in the Pacific Ocean and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean, there is no known geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to Lemuria.

Invalid Hypothesis
Though Lemuria is no longer considered a valid scientific hypothesis, it has been adopted by writers involved in the occult, as well as some Tamil writers of India. Accounts of Lemuria differ, but all share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological, often cataclysmic, change, such as pole shift.

In 1864, the zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater wrote an article on "The Mammals of Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Using a classification he referred to as lemurs but which included related primate groups, and puzzled by the presence of their fossils in Madagascar and India but not in Africa or the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent.

Sclater's theory was hardly universal for his time. Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, also looking at the relationship between animals in India and Madagascar, had suggested a southern continent about two decades before Sclater, but did not give it a name. The acceptance of Darwinism led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points of evolutionary origin. Prior to the acceptance of continental drift, biologists frequently postulated submerged land masses in order to account for populations of land-based species that were now separated by barriers of water. Similarly, geologists tried to account for striking resemblances of rock formations on different continents. Many hypothetical submerged land bridges and continents were proposed during the 19th century, in order to account for the present distribution of species.

The Lemuria theory disappeared from conventional scientific consideration after the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift were accepted by the larger scientific community. According to the theory of plate tectonics, Madagascar and India were indeed once a part of the same landmass, but plate movement caused India to break away millions of years ago and move to its present location. The original landmass broke apart... it did not sink below sea level.

Links to the Kerguelen Plateau
In 1999, drilling by a research vessel in the Indian Ocean discovered evidence that a large island, the Kerguelen Plateau, was submerged about 20 million years ago by rising sea levels. Samples showed pollen and fragments of wood in a 90 million-year-old sediment sample. Although this discovery might encourage scholars to expect similarities in dinosaur fossil evidence, and may contribute to understanding the breakup of the Indian and Australian land masses, it does not support the concept of Lemuria as a land bridge for mammals.