Sclater observed several similarities between the species of Madagascar and India, particularly in the distribution of lemurs. To Sclater, this suggested that Madagascar and India were once part of the same continent, a place he playfully called “Lemuria.” Scientists such as Thomas Huxley, Alfred Russell Wallace, and Ernst Haeckel seriously debated the existence of Lemuria, an idea made plausible by catastrophist theories of geology and biogeographical evidence in the field. Yet support for Lemuria waned as Alfred Wegener’s continental drift theory gained support in the twentieth century.