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Long-Lost Continent Found Under the Indian Ocean
ananyo writes "The drowned remnants of an ancient micro-continent may lie scattered beneath the waters between Madagascar and India, a new study suggests. Evidence for the long-lost land comes from Mauritius, a volcanic island about 900 kilometers east of Madagascar (abstract) The oldest volcanic rocks on the island date to about 8.9 million years ago. Yet grain-by-grain analyses of beach sand collected at two sites on the Mauritian coast revealed around 20 zircons — tiny crystals of zirconium silicate that are exceedingly resistant to erosion or chemical change — that were far older. One of these zircons was at least 1.97 billion years old. The researchers that made the discovery think that geologically recent volcanic eruptions brought shards of the buried continent to the Earth's surface, where the zircons eroded from their parent rocks to pepper the island's sands. Analyses of Earth's gravitational field reveal several broad areas where sea-floor crust at the bottom of the Indian ocean is much thicker than normal — at least 25 to 30 kilometers thick, rather than the normal 5 to 10 kilometers. Those crustal anomalies may be the remains of a landmass that researchers have now dubbed Mauritia, which they suggest split from Madagascar when tectonic rifting and sea-floor spreading sent the Indian subcontinent surging northeast millions of years ago."
Atlantis?
Not really found. This is like trying to find a lost child, and your search dog picks up a scent, or you find a child size shoe.
Still lost. Not found.
-Bill
According to the article, they entire civilization was using Windows 8 right before it sunk. Their continental IT department tried to roll out touchscreens and then the whole place sank into the sea. Strange, but not unexpected.
Remnants of MANY lost continents lay under the ocean floor.
And at the top of mountains too.
And those lost continents were made from remnants of previous lost continents.
Someone just discovered geology. Amazing.
This space available.
The Sleestak there are demanding reparations for disturbing their peace.
Table-ized A.I.
Made my way to Mauritius last weekend while trying to get to the airport Marriott with Apple Maps.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Nope, it's the long lost city of Atlanta; home of the coca cola bottling plant and other things than the gigantic airport hub.
I am bracing for another assault from the Tamil literature majors. There are references to sea level rise and lost cities (South Madurai) and lost rivers (Pahtruli) and lost temples (near Mamallapuram) and lost harbours (near Poompuhar) and lost grammar books (by Agastiyar ) in Tamil. Best explained by the ending of last ice age some 9000 years ago and the seas coming in a few kilometers and probably flooding a large river delta. But these guys postulate a "lost continent" of Lemuria, exactly in the Arabian Sea./Indian Ocean. Now they are going to come on like a ton of bricks claiming vindication and "proof" that the Tamil language is 1.9 billion years old. Especially since there is a literary reference that translates as, "after the rocks have appeared, but the sand has not yet been formed, [Tamils] were born with swords, the eldest civilization". That would gel with a 1.9 billion year old language.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
its called subduction, the continents are on the tectonic plates which float and move around. The San Andreas fault in California is a prime example of subduction, the pacific plate is subducting and recycling the north american plate.
This is why I like geologists, they are logical people. Astronomers never thought to call Pluto a microplanet.
I live in Mauritius and it's a pathetic hot place (lots of rain lately) with ave. internet speeds of 30 KB/s during the day and 80 KB/s at midnight when you're supposed to be asleep. This is what you get when the telco is a monopoly (51% Mauritian owned : 49% French (Orange)).
The the San Andreas is a strike-slip fault, not a subduction fault.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I'm not a geologist ...
Not to be cruel, but it shows (however I admire your interest). This is cool stuff once you get the bug. Your account reads plausible but somewhat confused. I'm not a geologist either. I did spend about a decade as a geophysical tech. My understanding is the mid-Atlantic ridge is opening up and pushing the North American plate away from the European plate, and the Pacific plate is subducting under the Western side of the North American plate. It's convection, but the geologic timescale dwarfs that process.
This story appears to relate to the time when India slammed into Asia creating the Himalayas. Left in India's wake was this thing, sinking as fast as the Himalayas rose. When you think of the enormity of such a thing happening, it deserves the often abused word "awsome." Multiply that with the [mb]illions of years it took, and awesome doesn't begin to describe it. The geologic timescale makes life on Earth look like the blink of an eye.
Earth's gotten smacked by planetoids about six times, iirc.
As Earth accreted from stardust, it was probably smacked [mb]illions of times during its formation. You'd think we'd be used to it by now. The Chelyabinsk thing the other day shouldn't have been a very big surprise, were it not for that geological timescale thing. We've seen this happening over and over, even in the miniscule time we've been here.
It's very difficult for average people to understand things on this timescale. We're accustomed to believe a millenium is a long time. It's not. It's only a long time compared to us.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit