“Claiming that Zealandia is a continent is a bit like stamp collecting”, Peter Cawood, a geologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, told Nature. About 94 percent is submerged in the ocean.
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The total area is estimated to be approximately 4,920,000 square km of which 93% remains submerged below the Pacific Ocean. Its visible portions include New Zealand and New Caledonia. The two islands are simply the highest points of Zealandia, with earthquakes in the region governed by the intersection of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates.
Most of Zealandia is now submerged and scientists estimated that it sank 60-85 million years ago.
Bruce Luyendyk of the University of California, Santa Barbara said that the new continent was nearly certain to be accepted as such, in an interview with Business Insider.
Researchers developed a new study which was recently published in the Geological Society of America’s Journal.
Should more scientists refer to Zealandia as a continent, should it be included in schoolbooks, for there is no official recognition of such things, then it will join Australia, Eurasia, Antarctica, Europe, Africa, North America and South America as the eighth continent.
Geologists say it is almost two million square miles.
The continent – known as Zealandia – is a distinct geological entity and meets all the criteria that are satisfied by the existing seven continents, the researchers said. The GSA paper argues that labeling Zealandia a continent has significance for the way the scientific community will conduct its research in the future.
The experts who penned the study, aptly titled “Zealandia: Earth’s Hidden Continent”, say if Zealandia had been mapped the same way scientists map Venus or Mars with current technology, we would have recognized it as its own continent much earlier.
It is 12 times bigger than Mauritia and six times bigger than Madagascar, and about the same area as greater India.
Mortimer hopes that Zealandia will soon become as familiar as other continents taught in school.
“Currently used conventions and definitions of continental crust, continents, and microcontinents require no modification to accommodate Zealandia”.
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This map shows the outline of Zealandia (red dashed line), based on several geoscience data sets.
