What, Google Earth has spotted the mythical city of Atlantis? Is it really the city lost under the sea, which Google Earth's new underwater search tool has found?

Well, Bernie Bamford, a British aeronautical engineer has claimed that he has spotted a mysterious grid of undersea lines while using the Google Earth's new underwater search tool. Bamford exacted that he spotted the strange pattern off the western coast of Africa, evidently near one of the possible sites of the legendary island, Atlantis, described by Greek philosopher Plato.

The screenshots from Google Earth displaying what appears like a city street grid on the ocean floor west of Morocco, in an area known as the Madeira Abyssal plane, were published by the London's tabloid The Sun, on Friday. The Sun specified that "the site in question lies at the coordinates 31°15'15.53" N, 24°15'30.53" W.

However, Google has waved off Bamford's findings, saying that the undersea grid lines spotted by Bamford are data artifacts rather than sunken streets; the strange pattern could be linked to the fabled sunken city. 

In its statement, Google wrote, "It's true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth, including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species and the remains of an ancient Roman villa. In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data."

Google explained that "similar grid lines can be found in other parts of the ocean where the sea floor has yet to be completely mapped, such as near Hawaii".

The city of Atlantis was described by Plato in his book Timaeus. In the book, Plato wrote, "This great island lay over against the Pillars of Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which the Mediterranean sea was only the harbor; and within the Pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to Egypt."