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Scientists Discover Evidence of a 'Lost Continent' Under the Indian Ocean (earthsky.org)
Scientists at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa say they've discovered evidence of a "lost continent" beneath the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. According to EarthSky, the evidence of the "lost continent" may be leftover from the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, which started to break up around 200 million years ago. The evidence itself "takes the form of ancient zircon minerals found in much-younger rocks." From the report: Geologist Lewis Ashwal of Wit University led a group studying the mineral zircon, found in rocks spewed up by lava during volcanic eruptions. Zircon minerals contain trace amounts of radioactive uranium, which decays to lead and can thus be accurately dated. Ashwal and his colleagues say they've found remnants of this mineral far too old to have originated on the relatively young island of Mauritius. They believe their work shows the existence of an ancient continent, which may have broken off from the island of Madagascar, when Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica split up and formed the Indian Ocean. Ashwal explained in a statement: "Earth is made up of two parts -- continents, which are old, and oceans, which are "young." On the continents you find rocks that are over four billion years old, but you find nothing like that in the oceans, as this is where new rocks are formed. Mauritius is an island, and there is no rock older than 9 million years old on the island. However, by studying the rocks on the island, we have found zircons that are as old as 3 billion years. 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." The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
They discovered the ground and they say they found it just lying there under a bunch of other ground that was covering it up? That is pretty special.
And was its ruler Namor or Aquaman?
Let me know if they find a mirror that answers to the name of Persilian.
Qui-Gon Jinn and Wanda????
Shit.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
First, it is a tiny continental fragment, not a whole continent. Second, their evidence is based only tiny crystals washed ashore, as all island is covered in more recent lava. I will trust this more when they actually drill through that one or two km of lava to recover the actual ancient continental crust.
Right, although Lewis Ashwal looks quite white to me. Oh, the wonders of being able to use a simple Google search...
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Firstly, Wegener's work hasn't been the norm for a very, very long time - it was roundly rejected in his lifetime, and only came back into vogue in the 1960s when computer simulations made a much stronger argument for the closeness of the fit. It really got going later on when, thanks to modern diving technology, we were able to go dive down where the predicted seams were - and indeed find the magma welling up through the cracks.
Secondly - this does not, in any way, contradict that theory. It merely suggests that there is an extra piece to the puzzle that's been lost. It doesn't change how the other pieces moved.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Ancient Tamil literature mentions many places and things that were "taken by the Sea". The city of South Madurai where the First Tamil Sangam (Institute) was established. The river Pahtruli, the first ever grammar book of Tamil called Agasthiam, the five great epics associated with the First Sangam were all taken by the sea. The oldest extant Tamil book is a grammar book, called Tholkappiam (literally Old Literature) is believed to be derivative of the lost book Agasthiam.
Since Homo sapiens broke out of Africa just 75,000 - 100,000 years ago it is commonly believed by the scientists that these events did not take place in geological time. The most common explanation was that, these were the folk memories of the ending of the last ice-age, 9000 years ago. Sea levels rose, inexorably and the coastal communities moved slowly to the higher ground, each generation remembering that they used to live where the sea was. The places mentioned in the fragments of Tamil literature must have been in the continental shelf just south of Cape Comarin.
In the Tsunami of 2004, people claim seeing a temple in the sea bed when the seas retreated before the onslaught of the tsunami off the coast of Mahabalipuram. The local legend claims the present shore temple is the seventh in the series, as the previous six were "taken by the Sea".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It is drastically different from the Flood legends of Hindu, Sumerian and Abrahamic Flood Legends. "God was angry at the sinfulness of the world and He destroyed most of Humanity, sparing a selected few" is common to these religions. Hindu Noah is called Manu. He was spared by Lord Vishnu who came in the form a giant fish. Sumerian Noah is called Ziusudra. Another common thing between these faith is the Indo-European language family. Since proto-Indo-European was spoken in the region north-east of the present day black sea, the speculation is: The ending of the ice age, raised the level of the Mediterranean sea so much, it overtopped the isthmus of Bhosporus, making it the Straits of Bhosporus. Black sea was a fresh water lake before. The Flood created by this overtopping was sudden and catastrophic and the people on the North-East shores barely escaped and scattered. They took with them the story of the Flood and the Indo-European language with them and slowly filled up the lands of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and then the Indus and Gangetic plains.
It is an interesting speculation. Not much of evidence to it, not even an "Ancient Aliens" like documentary in History channel.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Here's the satellite view on Google maps:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mauritius/@-13.1797616,57.7735312,2289136m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x217c504df94474c9:0x4203d9c2116bd031!8m2!3d-20.348404!4d57.552152
It kind of looks like Japan.
Anybody could have found this by merely playing with any of the numerous views of the ocean floor we've had in the last few decades, though it is neat to see evidence of it having previously been above water with notable signs of life.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.