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Is Zealandia the eighth continent?


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Might this be the lost continent of Atlantis? B)

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48 minutes ago, taniwha said:

Might this be the lost continent of Atlantis? B)

Considering where it is located, it could rather be Lemuria or Mu than Atlantis. However, Zealandia sank far too long ago to be either I think.

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Continents are defined by plate boundaries (check any tectonic map).   "Zeelandia" straddles a very active tectonic boundary (on which NZ stands) and is half in Australia and half the Pacific plate.    It is not a continent.  

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6 hours ago, Essan said:

Continents are defined by plate boundaries (check any tectonic map).   "Zeelandia" straddles a very active tectonic boundary (on which NZ stands) and is half in Australia and half the Pacific plate.    It is not a continent.  

Weeell, Europe and Asia are both on the Eurasian plate but are considered separate continents. I think that plate boundaries are a good way to do it, don't get me wrong.

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On 2/19/2017 at 7:39 AM, danielost said:

there are really only 4 continents.  north and south america is one.   europe, asia, africa are one,  australia and antarctica.  the reason north and south america are one continent is because of the isthmus of panama which connect them.  europe is considered a seperate continent because of culture.  and africa because of the middle east.  but a continent is surrounded on all sides by water.

Like Asia and Europe  ?  

You cant even get your own bible right daniel , so I would give  geology a miss, if I were you  .   :)    .      

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On 2/19/2017 at 7:39 AM, danielost said:

there are really only 4 continents.  north and south america is one.   europe, asia, africa are one,  australia and antarctica.  the reason north and south america are one continent is because of the isthmus of panama which connect them.  europe is considered a seperate continent because of culture.  and africa because of the middle east.  but a continent is surrounded on all sides by water.

Like Asia and Europe  ?  

You cant even get your own bible right daniel , so I would give  geology a miss, if I were you  .   :)    .      

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18 hours ago, taniwha said:

Might this be the lost continent of Atlantis? B)

Hmmmmmm .... could explain all those pyramids we have in Oz        ....  and the hieroglyphs          ;) 

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4 hours ago, oldrover said:

Right, will someone please tell me this, is Europe a continent or not? I have a right to know I live there. 

I thought you lived in  'British Isles '  ... they surrounded by water   .....    so you actually have 6.289 continents - where you live   :) 

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12 minutes ago, back to earth said:

I thought you lived in  'British Isles '  ... they surrounded by water   .....    so you actually have 6.289 continents - where you live   :) 

Now! let's not bring Brexit into this. But seriously, I thought Wales was once well south of the equator, Scotland was once part of North America, England is part of mainland Europe and has been so connected albeit in the form of little islands since at least the Jurassic, now only separated by the North Sea which covered Doggerland. And it'd always been part of Laurasia, as had presumably Scotland but not Wales. Whereas Ireland, I have no preconceived but likely erroneous  ideas about at all.  

Somebody needs to explain this to me at some point.

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I'd love to,  but alas, I only know my own area , which  started to form as ( I like to call it it )  'Proto-Australia' , then   I would have been 700 km out off the coast on the sea floor, the nearest coast would have been close to the South Pole and our neighbours were Antarctica and India .   Oh yeah ..... all right then ....   and New Zealand      :rolleyes:      .......    India split  and went to make the Himalayas,  so it could find spiritual enlightenment . 

Boil some dirty syrup slowly on the stove in a big pot and watch the surface  for further explanations  .  

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17 hours ago, back to earth said:

Like Asia and Europe  ?  

You cant even get your own bible right daniel , so I would give  geology a miss, if I were you  .   :)    .      

europe is a couple of peninsulas off of asia.  the only reason europe is called a continent is because of culture differences.  the divide is the caucasus mountains are.  where the caucasian people come from.

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23 hours ago, brizink said:

Danielost: wrong. Europe and and Asia are separated by the Caucasus mountains in eastern Europe and a number of rivers in the south. All of which rest along a continental fault line. Africa is it's own continental mass separated from Europe and Asia by mountains to the north east and the Mediterranean to the north which lay on top of another continental fault line. North America is also separated from South America along a fault line that lies under the Andes mountains of Venezuela and extends into the ocean on either side of the northern most section of the exposed land mass. They are all separated by fault lines, NONE of them are separated by culture or any other superficial points of division. You were however correct in your assertions about Greenland, it is indeed part of North America.

so your redefining what a continent is.  then africa should be two continents divide along the rift valley and india which is on its own continental fault line should be called a continent not a sub-content.  europe and asia were called separate continents long before we knew about rift lines.

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On 2/19/2017 at 11:38 PM, back to earth said:

I'd love to,  but alas, I only know my own area , which  started to form as ( I like to call it it )  'Proto-Australia' , then   I would have been 700 km out off the coast on the sea floor, the nearest coast would have been close to the South Pole and our neighbours were Antarctica and India .   Oh yeah ..... all right then ....   and New Zealand      :rolleyes:      .......    India split  and went to make the Himalayas,  so it could find spiritual enlightenment . 

Boil some dirty syrup slowly on the stove in a big pot and watch the surface  for further explanations  .  

Dirty syrup?

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1 hour ago, Nnicolette said:

Dirty syrup?

You can see it in a pot of water too. Or the oil for deep frying a turkey. Convection is what he is getting at. 

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On 19/02/2017 at 7:05 PM, Socks Junior said:

Weeell, Europe and Asia are both on the Eurasian plate but are considered separate continents. I think that plate boundaries are a good way to do it, don't get me wrong.

Correctly (and geologically) speaking Europe and Asia are known as Eurasia.  One single continental landmass.   Into which the sub-continent India has just rudely collided :D 

Danielost is sort of correct in a way: it's mainly for historic, Eurocentric, cultural, reasons that we still refer to Europe as a seperate continent.  Once, of course, Europeans thought it was the only continent .....    And indeed, here in Britain we still refer to it as just "the continent" (in much the way one refers to the place where all the rubbish ends up as just "the dump" :D )

 

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51 minutes ago, Essan said:

Correctly (and geologically) speaking Europe and Asia are known as Eurasia.  One single continental landmass.   Into which the sub-continent India has just rudely collided

 

Hey, Asia shouldn't have gotten in the way of India! It knew what it was in for when Gondwana started to break up. It should have lifted its skirts and tiptoed out of the way. (Much like Greenland did even more recently, so I've heard.)

Also, this whole sub-continent thing. India has so many Archean cratons in it. I think it deserves a better rep. Just because it didn't stick itself in a central position in supercontinents to absorb a lot of accretion doesn't mean it's less important than N. America. Why is Laurentia so special anyway! Sad! 

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Guest brizink
On 2/20/2017 at 1:20 PM, danielost said:

so your redefining what a continent is.  then africa should be two continents divide along the rift valley and india which is on its own continental fault line should be called a continent not a sub-content.  europe and asia were called separate continents long before we knew about rift lines.

Those mountains are on a fault line, which I stated. Also the fault line along the "rift" (Indus) valley is not a continental fault line, it does not extend into the mantle and is considered semi active. You can compare it to a crack in the surface layer of a tile while the other tiles are actual separate tiles. 

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3 hours ago, brizink said:

Those mountains are on a fault line, which I stated. Also the fault line along the "rift" (Indus) valley is not a continental fault line, it does not extend into the mantle and is considered semi active. You can compare it to a crack in the surface layer of a tile while the other tiles are actual separate tiles. 

again the continents were named before we know about fault lines.  we just got lucky that fault lines are where we divided them that is all.  the rift vally is in africa and is separating from the rest of africa.

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