What is Hateg Island?

About 70 million years ago, Europe looked very different from the continent we know today. In the south, the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Carpathians had not yet risen, so the area was covered by the waters of the Tethys Ocean. There were a number of islands in the ocean, and one of them is called Hateg Island by specialists, because its first traces were discovered in Hateg Country by Franz Nopcsa, 100 years ago.

What was Hateg Island like?

We do not know the details of the shape and geography of the island, but experts tell us that it was close in size to the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean (occupied by the states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). However, we know that the island was further south than today’s Romania, so it had a subtropical or even tropical climate. For this reason we can find impressions of palm leaves in Densuș. There we also find traces of volcanic eruptions, which seem to have been common on the island of Hateg.