Geologists Spy an Eighth Continent: Zealandia
This mostly submerged world should be recognized alongside Africa, Australia and others, argue some researchers
By Alexandra Witze, Nature magazine on February 17, 2017
New Zealand (south island on the left) is part of what some scientists argue should be a new continent. Credit: NASA, JSC
Beneath the waves in the southwest Pacific Ocean lies a mostly hidden realm—dubbed Zealandia—that deserves to be called a continent, geologists say.
Geophysical data suggest that a region spanning 5 million square kilometres, which includes New Zealand and New Caledonia, is a single, intact piece of continental crust and is geologically separate from Australia, a team of scientists from New Zealand, Australia and New Caledonia argue in the March/April issue of GSA Today.
“If you could pull the plug on the world’s oceans, then Zealandia would probably long ago have been recognized as a continent,” says team leader Nick Mortimer, a geologist at GNS Science in Dunedin, New Zealand.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geologists-spy-an-eighth-continent-zealandia/
