Mon Feb 25, 2013, 08:37 AM
dipsydoodle (42,094 posts)
Fragments of ancient continent buried under Indian Ocean
Source: BBC News
Fragments of an ancient continent are buried beneath the floor of the Indian Ocean, a study suggests.
Researchers have found evidence for a landmass that would have existed between 2,000 and 85 million years ago.
The strip of land, which scientists have called Mauritia, eventually fragmented and vanished beneath the waves as the modern world started to take shape.
The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21551149
Only just published. If not considered to be LBN then please advise.
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Fragments of ancient continent buried under Indian Ocean (Original post)
|Ian David||Feb 2013||#1|
Response to Ian David (Reply #1)
Mon Feb 25, 2013, 12:05 PM
Xithras (14,859 posts)
6. It's also a misleading and confusing claim.
Mauritius sits on the Mascarene Plateau, which stretches from Mauritius to the Seychelles. As far as I can tell, this new "microcontinent of Mauritius" IS the Mascarene Plateau.
The thing is, geologists have known that the Mascarene Plateau is a continental fragment for a very long time. It's also overlaid with a basalt layer that has been matched to the Deccan Traps, so it's also not news that it was once connected to India directly. While nobody has called it a "microcontinent" before, that's really just a change in terminology...all of the "discoveries" cited in the article have been known for decades.