Science & Technology

Long-lost continent 'Argoland' located 155 million years later

By T.K. Randall
October 24, 2023 ·  1 comment

The continents are always shifting. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Pablo Carlos Budassi The Earth's continents might appear stationary today, but they are in fact moving ever so slowly and have been doing so for hundreds of millions of years, gradually shifting the layout of the map.

Examples of this can be found across the world and over the last few years scientists have made great strides in determining exactly how today's continents were arranged in the planet's distant past.

Now one more piece of this gargantuan jigsaw puzzle has finally been slotted into place thanks to a new study into a chunk of Australia that broke away some 155 million years ago.

Measuring over 3,000 miles across and known as 'Argoland', this wayward piece of land is now thought to have drifted to the north-west and ended up at what is today the islands of Southeast Asia.

This doesn't mean that there is a veritable 'lost world' beneath the waves, however. Instead, Argoland gradually broke up over millions of years and no longer resembles the vast swathe of land it started off as.This also made it very difficult for the researchers to find out what happened to it.

"The situation in Southeast Asia is very different from places like Africa and South America, where a continent broke neatly into two pieces," said study co-author Eldert Advokaat.

"Argoland splintered into many different shards."

"We were literally dealing with islands of information, which is why our research took so long. We spent seven years putting the puzzle together."

You can check out a reconstruction of Argoland's movements below.


Source: IFL Science | Comments (1)

Tags: Australia, Argoland