A massive discovery about our planet could totally change how we understand the history of how it evolved.
Scientists have just discovered something big deep underneath New Zealand, something really big. They believe they’ve located a lost continent that sunk 100 million years ago, lost to the ages, until now.
The continent, which is being called Zealandia, is mostly submerged beneath the South Pacific and stretches 1.9 million square miles. It is 94 percent underwater, according to the study, which was published in the Geological Society of America’s Journal. At that size, it would be about as big as India.
The continent was part of the Gondwana super-continent that broke away 100 million years ago. Interestingly, New Zealand was never considered part of the Australian continent, only lumped in with the term “Australasia.” But now they think this seemingly isolated island was probably part of its own super land mass.
“Earth’s surface is divided into two types of crust, continental and oceanic, and into 14 major tectonic plates,” the abstract states. “In combination, these divisions provide a powerful descriptive framework in which to understand and investigate Earth’s history and processes. In the past 50 years there has been great emphasis and progress in measuring and modeling aspects of plate tectonics at various scales (e.g., Kearey et al., 2009).
“Simultaneously, there have been advances in our understanding of continental rifting, continent-ocean boundaries (COBs), and the discovery of a number of micro-continental fragments that were stranded in the ocean basins during supercontinent breakups (e.g., Buck, 1991; Lister et al., 1991; Gaina et al., 2003; Franke, 2013; Eagles et al., 2015). But what about the major continents (Fig. 1)? Continents are Earth’s largest surficial solid objects, and it seems unlikely that a new one could ever be proposed.”