A team of geologists and palaeontologists has discovered that, some 50 million years ago, there was a low-lying continent separating Europe from Asia that they have named Balkanatolia. At the time, it was inhabited by an endemic fauna that was very different from those of Europe and Asia. Geographical changes 40 to 34 million years ago connected this continent to its two neighbors, paving the way for the replacement of European mammals by Asian mammals.
