Around 200 million years in the past, Earth’s final supercontinent Pangea started to interrupt aside, with plate tectonics slowly shifting the continents into the world we acknowledge at this time.
Plate tectonics was solely found comparatively not too long ago. Though German meteorologist Alfred Wegner first proposed continental drift in 1912 – and hypothesized that the continents have been as soon as joined in a supercontinent he named Pangea – it took till the Sixties and new tech comparable to echo sounders and magnetometers earlier than scientists learning ocean ridges may clarify the processes behind the motion of the crust.
Since then, scientists have put collectively fashions of plate tectonics, incorporating new knowledge and have discovered the occasional new continent. In 2019, one group regarded on the Mediterranean area, recognized for being significantly complicated geologically.
“It is sort of merely a geological mess: every thing is curved, damaged, and stacked,” principal researcher Douwe van Hinsbergen, Professor of Global Tectonics and Paleogeography at Utrecht University’s Department of Earth Sciences, defined in an announcement. “Compared to this, the Himalayas, for instance, signify a slightly easy system. There you possibly can observe a number of massive fault strains throughout a distance of greater than 2000 km.”
Investigating the world from Spain to Iran over ten years and reconstructing it, they discovered that southern Europe has been sat on prime of a bit of continental crust across the measurement of Greenland, which separated from Africa over 200 million years in the past.
“Forget Atlantis. Without realising it, huge numbers of vacationers spend their vacation every year on the misplaced continent of Greater Adria,” the assertion defined.
While many of the misplaced continent turned subducted into the mantle, items of the crust – particularly sedimentary rocks – now make up the Apennine mountains, components of the Alps, the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey.
“Most mountain chains that we investigated originated from a single continent that separated from North Africa greater than 200 million years in the past,” Van Hinsbergen added.
Though you will not see many of the continent with out scuba gear, with coral reefs being deposited above among the misplaced continent, a small a part of it stays seen.
“The solely remaining a part of this continent is a strip that runs from Turin through the Adriatic Sea to the heel of the boot that types Italy.”
Other misplaced continents embody Zealandia, which was not too long ago sampled after sinking 100 to 80 million years in the past.
The research is revealed in Gondwana Research.
