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Natural History Atlantis

Atlantis is a mythical continent from Plato's writings. It was an advanced island that rivaled Athens. It lost favor with the Greek gods and as a result it fell beneath the waves.

Neat story but I'm not interested in the civilization aspect. I'm more interested in the idea of there being a large landmass in the Atlantic Ocean. If such a land like in the picture existed, what biomes would you expect it to have? You can ignore Antilla, I got the picture from Natural History Magazine. The land stretches from Newfoundland at its northern point and reaches below Florida at its southern point. I'm not sure if the interior is large enough to create deserts. It is definitely large enough to absorb the Azores however.

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    $\begingroup$ that doesn't look "just beyond the pillars of Hercules" (aka the strait of Gibraltar), as described by Plato, to me $\endgroup$
    – Pelinore
    Jan 18 at 21:29
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    $\begingroup$ VTC Needs Details. Ecology and climate are more than longitude and latitude. If this can be answered at all (@HomeGrownPotatoes is right, the existence of this landmass affects a LOT of things, which in turn affect the landmass), then it can only be done if you provide the geology of the continent (an entire continent...) which, of necessity, will include tectonic plate divisions that don't exist in Real Life. Without knowing the geology, the only viable answer to your question is, "it's big enough to have any biome you want, possibly excluding arctic biomes... maybe...." $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Jan 18 at 21:53

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This wouldn’t only effect Atlantis.

There is already an example of this in real life (at least somewhat.) Australia, and although it isn’t as big as Atlantis we can use it as a baseline. All coastal regions of your Atlantis continent would be covered in forests and grasslands. Southern bits would also have some jungles on it.

Depending on what direction your Atlantis continent is moving it might have mountains. If so there would be a rain shadow effect that would create deserts/arid areas on the land side of your mountains. Although I do think volcanoes would be more of a common sight. Considering this continent is in the middle of the Atlantic plate, there will surely be friction and assuming the Atlantis plate is newer (less dense) than the Atlantic, this would create many subduction zones where volcanoes are common.

This goes without mentioning the coasts of Atlantis would probably be ravaged constantly by terrible earthquakes and tsunamis which could help explain the myth of Atlantis sinking. Perhaps the ancient civilization was a coastal one and was destroyed by a great tsunami after a terrible earthquake.

A continent this large would certainly effect others around it. This tectonic plate would possibly be responsible for creating volcanoes and/or mountains on other landmasses. This also gets in the way of ocean currents, this would make coastal Atlantic regions have less wind, this would certainly effect coastal biomes.

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