Take a hike along the mountain belts scattered around the Adriatic Sea, and you may find yourself clambering across the crumpled leftovers of a long-lost continent.

This rocky jumble represents the ruins of a Greenland-size piece of continental crust that was demolished millions of years ago, scientists report this month in the journal Gondwana Research. The saga of the continent’s demise is part of a new report that re-creates the last 240 million years of the Mediterranean’s tectonic history in unprecedented detail.

The model shows how this continent first separated from what is now Spain, southern France, and northern Africa, forming a separate landmass the team has formally dubbed Greater Adria. But as the planet’s rocky plates continued