Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Accounts of Lemuria differ according to the requirements of their contexts. However, all share a common belief that the continent existed in ancient times but sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological change, often cataclysmic.
Though living modern lemurs are only found in Madagascar and several surrounding islands, the biogeography of extinct lemurs extending from Pakistan to Malaya inspired the name Lemuria. This was coined in 1864 by the geologist Philip Sclater in an article "The Mammals of Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science.
Puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent, which he named Lemuria for its lemurs.
