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Lemuria is the name given to an imaginary continent once thought to have disappeared beneath the waters of the Indian or the Pacific Ocean. When Lemuria was first proposed it was as a pathway that might explain the presence of similar species, both fossil and living, on the island of Madagascar and in Asia. As such it was created by a particular moment in science, as deep time opened up and Darwin's published theory of evolution changed thinking about what the distribution of similar species could mean. These changes in the understanding of nature produced a requirement to explain connections between species that had similar forms even when they were widely distributed
