In 1820, a Russian send full of sailors and, oddly, penguins – destined for the boys’s dinner – noticed a towering shore of ice at the horizon. This used to be the primary ever sighting of the Fimbul Ice Shelf, and it marked the respectable discovery of a brand new continent: Antarctica. It additionally cemented the trendy thought, upheld via maximum maps around the English-speaking international, that there are seven main landmasses.
As of late, schoolchildren, explorers and politicians typically settle for the neat department of the arena’s floor into those easy gadgets, which come with Europe, Asia, Africa, North The united states, South The united states, Australia, and Antarctica.
However in 2017, the tale took an surprising flip – the seven-continent fashion has been a mistake all alongside. Input Zealandia, a long-lost land to the southeast of Australia, in a different way referred to as the planet’s forgotten 8th continent. Scientists had lengthy predicted the life of this bonus southern landmass, but it surely remained lacking for 375 years – in large part as it’s nearly totally submerged underneath 1-2 km (0.6-1.2 miles) of water. Now they’re starting to resolve its secrets and techniques.
This month, a global group of researchers launched the maximum detailed maps of Zealandia to this point – incorporating all 5 million sq. kilometres (two million sq miles) of this underwater area and its geology. Within the procedure, they’ve exposed hints as to how this mysterious continent shaped – and why it’s been obscured underneath the waves for the ultimate 25 million years.
