This year, in February 2017, there has been found another continent. It has been found by a research team of the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa. This new continent is located under the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean.
The shame is that there are only remaining small parts of it. A recent report from Nature Communication says that these parts that left belonged to Gondwanaland, a giant continent that existed 200 million years ago. The separation of this ancient continent caused gave rise to Africa, South America, Australia, India and Antarctica. Now, there are some pieces of this “new” continent spread over the Indian Ocean, but there are under the sea.
The shame is that there are only remaining small parts of it. A recent report from Nature Communication says that these parts that left belonged to Gondwanaland, a giant continent that existed 200 million years ago. The separation of this ancient continent caused gave rise to Africa, South America, Australia, India and Antarctica. Now, there are some pieces of this “new” continent spread over the Indian Ocean, but there are under the sea.
But, how did they claim that this is a new continent? First, the team analyzed a mineral (zircon) found in rocks in the island of Mauritius. They reached to the conclusion that the remnants of this mineral were too old to belong to Mauritius: in the island there isn’t any rock older than 9 million years old, but the zircon found on these rocks was 3 billion years old. This fact demonstrates the existence of an ancient continent.
Even though I don’t really have anything to say about this news, I found it very interesting and curious. Furthermore, this report makes you think: if we have just found another continent, maybe there are some more and we don’t know it.
NEW WORDS:
Dub: annomenar, posar un sobrenom.
Crust: escorça.
Remnant: restes.
Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/03/world/lost-continent-mauritius-trnd/
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