Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) was a Flemish cartographer who produced the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), in which he located Atlantis in the Arctic. In 1596 Ortelius was struck by the possibility that America, Europe and Africa had at one time been joined together but had over time become separated.
Four hundred years later Alfred Wegner incorporated this view into his theory of plate tectonics. Ortelius suggested that Atlantis had been located in North America but had separated from Europe in the distant past.