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'Atlantis' continent 1.6 times the size of UK found off coast of Australia

A former landmass nearly twice the size of the UK has been mapped by experts who believe they have uncovered Australia's own 'Atlantis', where half a million people used to live

[Underwater ruins]

An Australian 'Atlantis' continent has been discovered by boffins mapping out underwater areas (stock)(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A long lost "Atlantis" continent nearly twice the size of the UK has seen experts claim the elusive area housed half a million people.

Signs of leftover rivers and patches of freshwater lakes in a now-sunken landscape were mapped off the coast of Australia. Boffins believe the "submerged" area was Australia's own "Atlantis", with its residents forced to find new homes when it sank.

Rising tides in the area, which eventually led to the coasts which new rest against Timor, left the landscape flooded and eventually buried beneath the waves.

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Investigations into the area believe the landmass was "about 1.6 times the size of the UK" and, according to lead study author Kasih Norman, it proves the coasts were more important for the country than first believed.

[Manta ray in the Ruins Lagoon]

A 'rapidly' receding shoreline will have proven troublesome for historic settlers (file)(Image: Getty Images)

"There's been an underlying assumption in Australia that our continental margins were probably unproductive and weren't really used by people, despite the fact that we have evidence from many parts of the world that people were definitely out on these continental shelves in the past," Norman said.

Piecing together information on historic sea levels around the coast of Australia led the study group as far back as the Ice Age when creating a map of the past, LiveScience reported.

Their findings showed a "staged migration" for those living on the land would have occurred around 14,000 years ago as rising tides soon swept up the area.

[Map of exposed land over the last 60,000 years]

New studies show a former landmass may have housed 50,000 to half a million people(Image: Carley Rosengreen/Griffith University)

Findings from the team point toward an increase in human activity along what is now the Australian coastline. Norman added: "It's quite fascinating to look at how people dynamically responded to events in the past and obviously survived them and thrived.

"I would hope that there might be something we can take from that, that we can apply to future climate change and sea level rise in the next few hundred years."

An increase in stone tools and signs of survival point to a mass migration from the ocean and those living in the area centuries ago would have seen the "encroaching coastline" change "quite rapidly".

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