NCIE
NCIE
Geologists have discovered an ancient lost continent in the ocean
Dutch researchers from Utrecht University have announced the discovery of Argoland, a land mass about 5,000 kilometers wide and more than 155 million years old. The research was published in the scientific journal Gondwana Research (GR).
Scientists have found that parts of Argoland are scattered across the Indian Ocean, and some of them have appeared in Southeast Asia.
Argoland is believed to have separated from Australia at the end of the Jurassic period, when brachiosaurs and stegosaurs roamed the Earth. Over thousands of years, it gradually drifted into Southeast Asia before finally disappearing. The existence of a continent is evidenced by the Argo Plain left behind, but until recently no one had been able to discover that land mass.
“Finding Argoland was not easy. We spent seven years solving this puzzle,” says Eldert Advocate, one of the authors of the study.
Scientists say that parts of the continent were hidden under the vast green jungles of Indonesia and Myanmar.
Using the remains, geologists were able to map in detail the slow erosion of Argoland. They concluded that at the end of the Triassic period, the continent was divided into an archipelago, which was later absorbed by the ocean.
Similar processes have occurred with other lost continents, including Zeeland, which sunk near Australia, and the Great Adriatic continent, which was once located in the Mediterranean Sea.
