Lost continent found after 375 years?

The eighth continent "Zealandia" was discovered in 1642, but it was not until 2017 that the group of geologists found it.  

Around the 17th century, Abel Tasman, a Dutch sailor, announced that a vast continent must have existed in the Southern Hemisphere.

It wasn't until 2017 that a team of geologists announced that they had discovered Zealandia.

Finally, Abel Tasman landed on a southern New Zealand island. At first, things did not go so smoothly as he encountered the local Maori for the first time. They crashed into a small boat between two Dutch ships. The incident left four people dead. Tasman later called the site Moordenaers Bay. But then no one else searched or set foot in this new land. Confident in his belief, on August 14, 1642, Abel Tasman left Jakarta, Indonesia on a mission to try to find the surrounding area. .

It wasn't until 2017 that a team of geologists announced that they had discovered Zealandia. Reports show that the continent is six times the size of Madagascar, making it the smallest and youngest continent in the world.

94% of Zealandia is underwater in the Pacific Ocean, with only a handful of islands jutting out, including the islands of New Caledonia, Southern New Zealand and Northern New Zealand. Since most of Zealandia is submerged, determining the age of the continent and mapping it is difficult. It is estimated that the continent is half the size of Australia.

"This is an example of something so obvious that it took a long time to discover," said Andy Tulloch, a geologist at the New Zealand Crown Research Institute who was part of the team that found Zealandia.

Currently, scientists are still trying to extract more information about Zealandia. "More than 8,000 specimens have been studied and several hundred fossil species have been identified," said Gerald Dickens, co-leader of the science team from Rice University in Houston. , pollen from terrestrial plants shows that the geography and climate of Zealandia were very different in the past".

While there are still some controversial issues, the team believes that this land below New Zealand meets all four criteria to be considered a continent including rising above the surrounding area. special geology, is a well-defined region, whose crust is thicker than the ordinary ocean floor.