【】

New Zealand, the land of Hobbits, ridiculously beautiful landscapes and, uh, The Feebles, has just become a little bit more magical.
An entire flipping continent might be hiding beneath New Zealand, geologists say. The area, named Zealandia, is massive.
SEE ALSO:New 'world's longest flight' travellers endure 16 hours of just sitting thereAt 4.9-million square kilometers, or nearly 1.9-million square miles, it's bigger than all of India. Yet most of it -- about 94 percent -- is submerged in the ocean, according to a new study in the Geological Society of America's journal, GSA Today.

Geologists haven't officially declared Zealandia a new continent. Instead, the study's authors make the case that it should be in the continent club with Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America and South America.
Zealandia was once part of Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent that merged with Laurasia around 335 million years ago to form the singular supercontinent Pangea, the study states.
So how did it go missing for so long?
Researchers say that's because geologists are still improving their understanding of things like what defines the continent-ocean boundaries and how the breakup of supercontinents transformed the Earth's surface.
The team, led by New Zealand-based geologist Nick Mortimer, argues that Zealandia is not merely a fragment of a continent, or a microcontinent left behind by Pangea, but a continent in its own right.

Continents are generally considered to be large, identifiable areas that are underlain by continental crust. If you take away the ocean water surrounding New Zealand and New Caledonia, that's exactly what you'll find.
These islands and others are connected by a submerged chunk of continental crust that runs across a large area of the Earth's surface, the researchers found.
"The mostly underwater continent is geologically separate and distinct from Australia and Antarctica and... should be treated as such," Mortimer and his colleagues said in a press release.
Just goes to show: New Zealand is just as magical as Peter Jackson always told us it was.

Featured Video For You
New Zealand police officers dance to improve relationship with community
相关文章
How Hyperloop One went off the rails
In December 2014, an engineer with the unlikely name Brogan BamBrogan was in the driveway of his cla2025-04-26Twitch's new content tags are long overdue but they'll need back
With a bit more than a week to go before Pride Month kicks off on June 1, Twitch is launching a new2025-04-26- Good news, T-Mobile customers: You can claim bragging rights over your friends on other mobile netwo2025-04-26
- It's been a longtime coming, but the OnePlus Watch is here. The company unveiled its first-ever smar2025-04-26
Major earthquake and multiple aftershocks rock central Italy
UPDATE: Aug. 25, 2016, 8:22 a.m. BST。 Death toll is now at least 247 dead: 190 in Rieti province and2025-04-26NASA puts its money on SpaceX for a massive lunar lander
NASA has a plan to put humans back on the surface of the moon, and that plan officially includes Spa2025-04-26
最新评论