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Scientists have surveyed the lost continent of Zealandia in the South Pacific:
A team of 32 scientists from 12 countries returned last week from a nine-week voyage to study the once-lost continent of Zealandia in the South Pacific. This mostly submerged or hidden continent is an elevated part of the ocean floor, about two-thirds the size of Australia, located between New Zealand and New Caledonia. Scientists said earlier this year they thought Zealandia should be recognized as a full-fledged Earth continent. This was one of the first extensive surveys of the region, and the scientists who carried it out – affiliated with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) at Texas A&M University – have just arrived back in Hobart, Tasmania, aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution. They said their work has already revealed that Zealandia might once have been much closer to land level than previously thought, providing pathways for animals and plants to cross between continents.
Little is known about Zealandia because it's submerged about two-thirds of a miles (more than a kilometer) under the sea. Until now, the region has been sparsely surveyed and sampled.
Scientists taking part in the 2017 expedition drilled deep into Zealandia's seabed at six sites in water depths of more than 4,000 feet (1,250 meters). They collected 8,000 feet (2,500 meters) of sediment cores from layers that record how the geography, volcanism and climate of the region have changed over millions of years.
Also at Smithsonian Magazine, The Guardian, and the JOIDES Resolution blog (drilling ship).
Zealandia: Earth's Hidden Continent (open, DOI: 10.1130/GSATG321A.1) (DX)
Previously: Geologists Spy an Eighth Continent: Zealandia
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @03:28AM (18 children)
This one hasn't cleared its ocean. It's obviously a dwarf continent.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 03 2017, @03:31AM (13 children)
No, it's curretly a sea bed. At least for the last 60milion years already.
If it had cleared its ocean, it was very long ago... and then it went back for more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:52AM (12 children)
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:08AM
Me words ez'clty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:04AM (10 children)
Welsh? Mrs Trellis, is that you?
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:50AM (7 children)
You will be wishing it was Welsh, when the Ancient Ones awaken!!
(You really have no idea, do you! Google Cthulthu. It might help)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:46AM
Et tu Brutae? Whoosh!!! Though it pains me...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @01:04PM
Thank goodness it's just them. They're easily defeated by aligning oneself to each of the three mutually exclusive elements on each simultaneous 24 hour day, then on the remaining simultaneous rotation, align yourself with Mantorok. They'll all destroy each other when the lich king summons the ancient of the element he's aligned with on each of the simultaneous 24 hour days and mutually annihilate. Of course that doesn't solve the problem of Mantorok. Men go and come, but Mantorok abides.
True, it requires a bit of finesse, but you'd have to be RETARDED not to be able to pull it off, like some idiot with a cyclops mentality, inflicting static non pulsating logos as a fictitious queer same sex transformation. (It is the absolute verifiable truth and proven fact that your Belly-Button Signature ties to Viviparous Mama.)
The only thing that can truly frighten me these days are the Sheeple, sealed by the advanced people of
AtlanZealandia 10,000 years ago.... Let us hope that nobody is foolish enough to wake them.(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday October 03 2017, @02:15PM (3 children)
Wait, Google now has also a Cthulthu service?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:51PM
It won't translate that dialect of Welsh that Chtulthu speaks. Maybe there's a message in Cliff Burton's bass soloing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:56PM
Sorry, it's a closed beta.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:58PM
Looking forward to people walking down the street asking their phone "Ok Chtulhu, where is the nearest mental institution?"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by rylyeh on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:07PM
That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange eons, even death may die!
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:05PM (1 child)
It's Qwghlmian [wikia.com]. Cthulhu's speech employs many Qwghlmian loan words. It's a common mistake.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 04 2017, @05:32PM
I think we should nominate Phoenix666 to go get those loaners, and bring them back where they belong. I'd do it myself, but, uhhh, I'll have something important to do soon, I think, maybe . . .
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday October 03 2017, @04:53PM (3 children)
I thought it was Mike Brown who demoted Pluto? And hasn't he discovered Nibiru yet? What's taking so long? It's already past the end of the world.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by rylyeh on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:11PM (2 children)
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
Would you mind awfully translating that archaic dialect of Welsh in your sig? Google translate doesn't understand it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Informative) by rylyeh on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:41PM
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:23AM (5 children)
Kerguelen Island in the South Indian Ocean is the remnant of another submerged microcontinent.
Way I've come to see it is that plates scrape along the surface of the Earth and pile up the lighter elements into mountain ranges. Erosion spreads these mountain ranges into continent sized land masses. Eventually, erosion would lower, flatten and spread this material so far that it would all end up underwater, except most of the time, the scraping and piling up happens faster than the wearing down. Also, plants greatly slow erosion. North America is 2 mountain ranges (the Rockies and the Appalachians) and their aprons meeting in the Mississippi River valley. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's basically it.
Eventually, the mantle convection and movement will stop, when Earth's innards exhaust all its heat. Then there will only be erosion, which will put all the continents underwater. However, that's tens of billions of years in the future. Long before that, the sun will fry the Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:40AM
fry and maybe eat [nasa.gov] (no JavaScript needed)
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:54PM (1 child)
Actually it is a lot more complicated than that (but I get your point). The parts of North America that makes up the area between the Rockies and the Appalachians probably existed long before either. If you want a layman's description of it, I suggest John McPhee's Crossing the Craton, although you might only be able to get that as part of his Annals of the Former World. Either way would be good, they are excellent books about geology that even a non-geologist should find interesting. Had they been available to me when I was in high school I might have gone into geology as a profession rather than it becoming another interest when I stumbled into Death Valley 15 years later.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 04 2017, @05:35PM
"when I stumbled into Death Valley 15 years later"
Did you ever get out, or do you post from the afterlife?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:00AM (1 child)
The earths crust is made of oceanic crust, which is mainly basalt, which contains a lot of metals and is heavier, as dense as the Magma. It is bouyant and easily subducted. The continental crust contains lighter rocks, with fewer metals, like granite. It is bouyant enough to not be subducted. Continental crust began as oceanic crust. My understanding is how things work is that oceanic crust is subducted. The crust sort of partially melts as it dives down into the mantle. The lighter elements float up as magma and intrude into overthrusting plate. This creates emplacements of granite and other light rocks in the overthrusting crust, increasing its bouyancy. It creates a chain of volcanic islands at the surface. Eventually subduction will pull this chain onto a continent, When the islands hit the continent, instead of subducting they end up getting docked onto the edge of the continent. The continent therefore grows. The continents are therefore made of aggregation of crust decreasing in age toward the edge of the continent. Since the continental crust is lighter, it floats higher and therefore can break the surface of the seas. Continental crust can be much older, is a variety ages, because it is not subducted. Oceanic crust is regularly recycled, there is no oceanic crust older than 200 million years (some of the oldest is in the Gulf of Mexico). Research has shown that the oldest continental crust is probably in Australia where a 4.4 billion zircon was found, the rock it came from could not be found but it was lodged in a 3.8 billion year old sandstone.
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:25AM
Whoops, i meant to say the oceanic crust is not very bouyant, the continental crust is. Because the melting of subducting crust, happens in a way that only the lighter elements manage to float upward and into the overthrusting plate, the magma ends up poor in metals and is light, rocks such as granite. the continental crust contains a lot of light rock like granite. Continents do not generally grow by erosion. They grow by the accretion of the island arcs formed by plate subduction and island arc magmatism processes I mentioned that creates the chains of volcanos. An example of this is Japan which is brand new continental crust being created and will become a part of asia when it is pulled towards and collides with asia. the buoyancy of contintental crust and isostatic balancing is what keeps the higher profile of continental crust. It just floats higher than oceanic crust. Because its lighter.
Plants have only been around, by the way, since about 400 million years ago or whatever, on land anyway. So for most of earths history, there were no plants, going back to 4.5 billion years. Australia is 4.4 billion years old, the average age of continental crust is something like 1.5 billion years. So the continents survived without plants around.
There are sedimentary contributions from the collision of island arcs to the edge of the continents which forms coastal mountains, the erosion of such mointains that can supply sediment to the interior of the continents. Marine transgressions like zuni sequence have also built up sedimentary layers on continents. carbonate rocks like limestone are not from erosion materials. There is some effect of this in reversing the effects of erosion.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:31AM (7 children)
Am I the only one that would like to see them double of treble the new zealand landmass by building a grid of off-shore walls and pumping out the water?
I mean, the engineering of that - while mundane - would be fascinating to watch.
Also, more farmland, great place to produce salt u.s.w.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @12:02PM
Or build a wall around New Caledonia and call it the New Hadrian's Wall.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday October 03 2017, @02:17PM (5 children)
And a failure of the wall would make New Orleans look like a minor event.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday October 03 2017, @02:43PM (2 children)
Hence "a grid of [..] walls", so you will end upp with cells that can flood individually.
What I had in mind (like salt production) would require occasional intentional flooding of a cell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:24PM (1 child)
I thought you were joking (Zeeland is in the Netherlands).
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:01PM
Was half-joking, it would wreck havoc on the ecology but would still be impressive to watch.
Regarding the Zeeland/New Zealand, to quote wikipedia "In 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:00PM
The important thing is that it will still keep out the Mexicans.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:02PM
(Score: 1) by jman on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:28AM
Sounds like a new project for Ben Stiller.