Underground continent of nearly 5 million km2 hidden under the Pacific Ocean

New research by an international team of scientists suggests that Earth has a continent called Zealandia hidden beneath the Pacific Ocean and attached to New Zealand.

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Map of the continent of Zealandia. Photo: geosociety.org.

A group of 11 international scientists discovered that New Zealand and New Caledonia are part of a giant continental crust covering 4.9 million square kilometers that separated from Australia, RT reported on February 16.

The study, published in the journal of the American Geophysical Union, found that 94% of the continent is underwater, mainly due to the thinning of the crust as the supercontinent broke apart. Scientists came to the conclusion after using gravity and elevation mapping technology using satellite data.

"Classifying Zealandia as a continent is not just adding another name to the list of Earth's continents, but its scientific value is much greater. Discovering a continent that can be largely submerged but not broken is very meaningful in exploring the process of continental crust attachment and separation," the research team said.

"Based on a wealth of physical and geophysical evidence collected over the past two decades, we argue that Zealandia is not a collection of partially submerged continental fragments but a complete continent of 4.9 million square kilometers," the scientists asserted.

Because geographers group Europe and Asia together into the supercontinent Eurasia, the discovery of Zealandia would likely bring the total number of continents on Earth to seven.

Zealandia's crust is about 10 to 30 kilometers thick and its total area is slightly larger than India. Researchers believe Zealandia is part of a continental plate that split off from Antarctica about 100 million years ago, and then separated from Australia 80 million years ago.

According to VNE