Earth's continent means
By convention, "continents are understood to be large, continuous, discrete masses of land, ideally separated by expanses of water." According to geographical nomenclature, there are seven continents in the world - Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa and Antarctica, now there is one more to be added....

ZEALANDIA is Earth's eighth new continent!
Bangalore, Feb 19,2017
Scientists discover 5million square kilometer landmass east of Australia.
A continent two-thirds the size of Australia has been found beneath the south-west Pacific Ocean, scientists reported in the journal of the Geological Society of America.
A team of 11 geologists, published the paper, titled 'Zealandia: Earth's Hidden Continent,' in which they claimed Zealandia has all four attributes necessary to be considered a continent. The four characteristics are - Elevation, Geology, Crustal Structure and Limits and Area
We may very soon be able to visit a new continent on the planet earth! Yes, if the reports are to be believed, that the scientists have discovered a new, eighth continent on earth and they are calling it Zealandia. The boot-shaped region, about the size of greater India, located to the east of Australia. A team of 11 geologists found the land mass of 4.9 million square kilometers (1.74 million square miles) is 94 percent underwater and only its highest points - New Zealand and New Caldeonia - poke above the surface.
At 4.9 million square kilometres, Zealandia is touted to be Earth's smallest continent with Asia as the largest continent. There are seven continents in the world and the latest discovery of the eighth continent, Zealandia is indeed an earth-shattering moment for all the inhabitants worldwide.
There is no widely accepted definition of a continent, and geographers and geologists differ on the question. (Geographically, Europe and Asia are considered separate continents, whereas geologists consider them the single landmass of Eurasia.)
This mostly submerged world should be recognized alongside Africa, Australia and others, argue some researchers.
Earth's continent means...
By convention, "continents are understood to be large, continuous, discrete masses of land, ideally separated by expanses of water." According to geographical nomenclature, there are seven continents in the world - Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa and Antarctica, with Zealandia all set to include as the eighth continent.
However, there is no international body in charge of designating official continents, and so the researchers must hope that enough of their colleagues agree to recognize the landmass. Otherwise, their proposal could remain more of a theoretical wish than a radical reshaping of what every child has to learn in geography class. If the recent discovery is accepted by the scientific community, cartographers will probably have to add an eighth continent to future maps and atlases.
"Zealandia" is believed to have broken away from Australia about 80 million years ago and sank beneath the sea as part of the break up of the super-continent known as Gondwana.
Forget Atlantis: 'Lost continent' found under Mauritius
Just few days before publication of papers on the birth of a new continent, "Zealandia", the scientists' unearthed evidence of an ancient lost continent, "Mauritia." The study appeared in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Communications
A team of South African geoscientists recently reported in Nature Communications that they discovered a lost continent that has sunken deep in the Indian Ocean. Located underneath the island of Mauritius near Madagascar, the lost continent has been given the name Mauritia.
It is believed that Mauritia once connected Madagascar and the subcontinent of India 85 million years ago. Scientists estimate that Mauritia was about a quarter of the size of Madagascar. As Madagascar and India started to move and pull away from one another, Mauritia began to stretch, eventually falling apart.
The discovery of Mauritia has not only revealed the possibility of unearthing other lost continents. It has also highlighted the methods scientists use today to reconstruct and evaluate how continents formed and broke apart thousands of years ago, demonstrated through their use of radiometric dating and examination of gravitational fields.
Forget Atlantis: 'Lost continent' found under Mauritius
Scientists have uncovered evidence of an ancient "lost continent" under the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, according to a new study.The study said there are likely many pieces of various sizes of "undiscovered continent, collectively called Mauritia," spread over the Indian Ocean.
The study appeared in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Communications.
Welcome
Welcome to Rajana. I update my posts of varied interests; Sports, Science, Art, Photography and some current topics. The stories are in English and தமிழ்(Tamil). Please do visit and share your comments.
I have two domains: Social and Exports. Social is for my social activities whereas the Exports is purely professional; showcasing our export products.
Social:
Popular Posts
Search
Geologists spy an eighth continent: Zealandia
"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.
Satellite maps made using Earth's gravitational field clearly show that Zealandia is a coherent geographical feature stretching from near Australia's north eastern coast well past the islands of New Zealand
Gondwana is the part of Pangaea that lies in the Southern Hemisphere. It includes most of the present-day South America, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica. Pangaea split into the two megacontinents Laurasia and Gondwana beginning in the Late Triassic. By studying the mineral zircon, which is found in rocks spewed up by lava during volcanic eruptions, Ashwal and his colleagues discovered remnants of this mineral that were much too old to belong on the island of Mauritius.
"Earth is made up of two parts - continents, which are old, and oceans, which are 'young,'" he said. On continents, rocks can be billions of years old, but nothing that old exists in the oceans, explained Ashwal.
Mauritius is only a few million years old, while some recently discovered zircon crystals on the island were estimated at 3 billion years old. "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," says Ashwal.