Los Atlantis: Discovery of Undersea Mountain Linked to the Legend of Atlantis

A large mountain with three hills. volcano The one that sank in the ocean millions of years ago off the coast of the Spanish island of Lanzarote may have inspired a legend. AtlantisResearchers say.

A team of scientists is studying volcanic activity off the coast of Canary Islands The seamount, which is about 50 kilometers in diameter, was observed at a depth of 2.3 kilometers from the surface of the water. They discovered sunken islands, some of which still have their shores intact.

“This may be the origin of the Atlantis legend,” he told the newspaper. Life Sciences Program leader Luis Somoza. Scientists have named the newly discovered underwater mountain The Atlanteansfrom the legendary civilization of Atlantis, which was drowned in the ocean by the gods as punishment for the debauchery of its citizens, according to Plato.

“They were islands in the past and they sank, and they are still sinking, as the legend of Atlantis says,” said Somoza, a geologist at Spain’s Geology and Mining Institute (IGME-CSIC).

Scientists found Los Atlantes while exploring the seabed off the east coast of Lanzarote, the easternmost island of the Canary Islands, using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) at depths between 100 and 2,500 metres. The dive was part of an IGME-CSIC programme aimed at better understanding underwater volcanic and hydrothermal activity in the area.

Beaches 60 meters below the surface

Los Atlantis will be a chain of islands during which Eosin (56 to 34 million years ago). When the volcanoes stopped erupting, the lava hardened and became denser, causing the islands to sink into the ocean. But some features of these lost islands still remain.

“We identified beaches, rocks and sand dunes on the flat top of the seamount,” Somoza told Live Science, adding that the sand now covering the volcanic rocks may have been deposited when the islands were actively sinking.

Some beaches are only 60 metres below the ocean surface. During the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower than today, dormant volcanoes were transformed into islands again. When sea levels rose at the end of the ice age, they sank again.

Somoza said the team will now analyze the samples they collected from Los Atlantes to date the volcanic rocks and determine when the islands began to sink. They also plan to return to the underwater volcanoes of the Canary Islands during an expedition next year.