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1.7-Billion-Year-Old Chunk of North America Found Sticking To Australia (livescience.com)
walterbyrd shares a report from Live Science: Geologists matching rocks from opposite sides of the globe have found that part of Australia was once attached to North America 1.7 billion years ago. Researchers from Curtin University in Australia examined rocks from the Georgetown region of northern Queensland. The rocks -- sandstone sedimentary rocks that formed in a shallow sea -- had signatures that were unknown in Australia but strongly resembled rocks that can be seen in present-day Canada. The researchers, who described their findings online Jan. 17 in the journal Geology, concluded that the Georgetown area broke away from North America 1.7 billion years ago. Then, 100 million years later, this landmass collided with what is now northern Australia, at the Mount Isa region.
"This was a critical part of global continental reorganization when almost all continents on Earth assembled to form the supercontinent called Nuna," Adam Nordsvan, Curtin University doctoral student and lead author of the study, said in a statement. Nordsvan added that Nuna then broke apart some 300 million years later, with the Georgetown area stuck to Australia as the North American landmass drifted away.
"This was a critical part of global continental reorganization when almost all continents on Earth assembled to form the supercontinent called Nuna," Adam Nordsvan, Curtin University doctoral student and lead author of the study, said in a statement. Nordsvan added that Nuna then broke apart some 300 million years later, with the Georgetown area stuck to Australia as the North American landmass drifted away.
Isn't that why we sent the Australians over there in the first place?
Actually the reason that convicts were transported to Australia is because the Brits could no longer dump them in North America due to that pesky revolution thingy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Oh come on now. That's just because they couldn't dump them in the colonies anymore, they were still doing that in Upper and Lower Canada and the colonial state of Newfoundland. Despite what the wikipedia article says, the crown was still shipping them to north america until the very late 1700's(round about 1795ish), but only into lands "just far enough" to not make it an issue for the newly founded US. See there was even a trick to it, they would declare the prisoners being sent to an "unknown location" and then basically dump them in the territory or colonial state. Who'd then be responsible for well...everything, from feeding to housing, and so on while it "was in dispute with the crown." And that could take years, and in the mean time the prisoners would/could be forced onto a plantation while arguing with the crown over it.
Lot's of bits of history like that which really doesn't get fully covered. Here's an example from 1789, also covers some other stuff but worth the reading.
Om, nomnomnom...