Featured Image Credit: World Lifestyle
You’re probably asking, just like we did, “how do you lose a continent?” They’re pretty large, and they’re generally positioned above the water— you can see them.
But… one did go missing. And here’s how:
Once upon a time, around 200 million years ago, Earth was kind of one big super-continent. Surrounded by a single, massive ocean. But… after a while, the continent started to break, forming gaps between… well, each of the single continents we know today. The continents continue to spread apart, new ground being created each year by rifts in the mid-oceanic ridge.
Some of them were large pieces, like North America or Africa, while some were smaller. Of course, since the divide of this supercontinent, there have been many islands merely created via volcanic eruption and cooling— which is how the island of Mauritius was formed in the Indian Ocean, to the East of South Africa and Madagascar. Or… that’s what was believed.
While there are supposed to be no rocks on Mauritius that age over 9 million years, because the volcanic rocks only age 9 million years old— indicating that’s when it was created— the team behind this discovery from Wits University, found zircon minerals that date back almost 3 billion years.
Further, Professor Lewis Ashwal of Wits University recalled that they found “grains within trachyte that show ages between 2.5 and 3 billion years”, again, which are not supposed to exist on an otherwise 9 million year-old island. which means there’s something else going on— something underneath the island.
“The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent.” said Professor Ashwal. This means that although Mauritius is a volcanic island, it was formed on top of a piece of the continental crust is
Ashwal noted that specialists are still unsure of how the supercontinent began to break apart at all, and how the ocean as we know it today was formed. This discovery could offer insight and clues that there are other “missing” pieces of the supercontinent spread throughout the Indian ocean, and could be hidden underneath other small islands.