Lost Continent Lurks Under African Island

[Claire.]

3-Billion-Year-Old 'Lost Continent' Lurking Under African Island

It's official: A 3-billion-year-old "lost continent" lurks beneath the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, new research confirms.

Sparkly, iridescent flecks of rocks known as zircons from Mauritius date back billions of years, to one of the earliest periods in Earth's history, the researchers found. Other rocks on the island, by contrast, are no more than 9 million years old. "The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent," Lewis Ashwal, lead author of the new study and a geologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in South Africa, said in a statement.

Read more: Live Science

[Likely Guy]

Atlantis! They found it!

[.ZZ.]

1 minute ago, Likely Guy said:

Atlantis! They found it!

Great minds think alike!

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

Please don't tell Mario Dantas. 

[glorybebe]

See?  Amazing finds keep happening.

[Gingitsune]

2 hours ago, Likely Guy said:

Atlantis! They found it!

Wouldn't it be Lemuria?

[Tatetopa]

Lemuria!  They found it.

[Doc Socks Junior]

Gondwana was long-lasting. Detrital zircons from Gondwana itself seems about right. Inheritance, ya know? God knows there is enough ancient material there. I zapped some 2.7 Ga zircons from one of the Gondwana continents a little while back. Once I get back inside a paywall I'll try to find the paper.

Oops. It's available online now. Ah. Between Madagascar and Southern India - particularly the Dharwar. That'll get you those ages, certainly.

[Podo]

That's...really cool, actually. I like that we've found such old rock. I'm sure we'll get all kinds of other discoveries from it

[back to earth]

I dont trust these lost continents    .....    'lurking'  about like that  .      

[+Hammerclaw]

How do you fit a whole continent under an island?

[crystal sage]

it looks more like Bismuth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth  

[Doc Socks Junior]

On ‎2‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 11:29 PM, Hammerclaw said:

How do you fit a whole continent under an island?

Like that, give or take. Presently like this:

From Ashwal et al., 2017. Archaean zircons in Miocene oceanic hotspot rocks establish ancient continental crust beneath Mauritius, Nature Communications.

Link: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14086

Edited February 6, 2017 by Socks Junior