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.

Comments

Theft and larceny

[TimothyHollins]

Isn't that why we sent the Australians over there in the first place?

Re:Theft and larceny

[OzPeter]

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/...

Re:Theft and larceny

[Mashiki]

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.

For those of us

[TFlan91]

For those of us that aren't geologists and saw "Nuna", but read/expected "Pangaea":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:For those of us

[jellomizer]

For most of us, even the highly educated, We have a High School or Middle School understanding of most topics. When we furthered our education, it for the most part had became specialized in particular areas, But for those who didn't specialize in that area, we have a limited understanding, in the topic. (Thank you for the link for additional information) Pangaea, was the latest Super Continent which we are shown during or basic education, as it is relatively recent enough that we could plainly see how the Continents fit together. "Nuna" had continental plates that do not look like what we know of, hence hard to teach to kids. And once we get older unless we study geology such topics isn't so relevant to other topics we choose to study.

This brings up the disturbing trends of people not believing the experts in fields, and some of them are in leadership positions who's actions causes change.
Now a leader may not follow the advice of the expert, because their may be factors beyond that particular field, that need to be weighed in, however these experts should be listened to as you gut instinct and general knowledge in most things are actually at a basic level.

Re:For those of us

[bugs2squash]

scientists are fallible like anyone else, no reason to trust any one of them

The system of science however has been reliably self-correcting for centuries now. Whether driven by self interest, curiosity or a sense of duty, scientist have a stake in exposing mistakes and correcting them. So yes, I trust that any big thing would be addressed and resolved and even small things get cleared up eventually

Re: For those of us

[DutchUncle]

:-) I think it was 1968 or 1970 when the idea was revived with more support from new ground penetrating radar and other new geophysical information gathering techniques. Computer graphics helped make illustrative animations that sold the idea.

Re:For those of us

[careysub]

The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912

You should have a lower user ID if you're that old.

Kids daydreaming in school and looking at the world map hanging on the wall will on occasion notice that the margins of Eurasia-Africa fit into the Americas. Ortelius gets the credit for making this observation because it was incidental to the main reason history remembers him - he was the leading cartographer and atlas publisher of his age. He had in this hands the first good set of maps of the margins of the two continent systems anyone had ever prepared, so he was the first to be able to notice this readily apparent fact.

Wegener's contribution was on another level entirely. He studied the geology and fossils along the margins of both continental systems and showed the same geology and fossil species are found along the margin of the divide from one end to the other. And plainly species distributions look nothing like that at any recent time (recent here means the last 150 million years). Wegener also identified the strata, and thus time were the similarities end and divergence begins.

He did not have theory about how it moved, which was what kept the idea from being take seriously. But the evidence for the fact that they were joined 175 million years ago that Wegener compiled is overwhelming. Even without a plausible explanation for how they managed to move apart the fact that did had such an astonishing body of evidence supporting it geology should have accepted that fact as it stood, and start thinking about how to uncover a mechanism by which it occurred, and developing theories to test through field research. As it was sea floor spreading was discovered serendipitously, through anomalies in other more general oceanographic studies.

Re:Bloody Americans.

[Holi]

Piss off, why you blaming us for some stupid Canadian rock?

Thing probably already apologized to you.

Fake News Ticker reports

[Plumpaquatsch]

President Trump demands immediate return of American property. Unnamed private investor will be building a golf resort on it.

Re:Fake News Ticker reports

[cyberchondriac]

It said parts of Canada, not the US. Good reading comprehension.
Justin Trudeau apologized for the inconvenience to the Ozzies and offered to immigrate half of Australia's deadly snakes and spiders to British Colombia as an appeasement

Re:Fake News Ticker reports

[thegarbz]

On behalf of all Australians we encourage your unnamed investor to build his course and spend as much time playing there as possible. The only things up there are skin cancer, firebombing birds, crocodiles, and the worlds deadliest jellyfish. Think you're safe? Not even Steve Irwin survived up there.

The Proper Name

[dcw3]

We call that the "sticky bit"