2023-11-02 16:57:12
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In Southeast Asia, researchers have tracked down the lost continent of Argoland – but it is no longer in one piece. (Symbolic image) © IMAGO/Reinhard Dirscherl
The continent of Argoland separated from Australia 155 million years ago – and has disappeared ever since. But he left his mark.
Utrecht – 200 million years ago the earth looked very different than it does today. Instead of today’s continents, there was a supercontinent called Pangea, which continued to change over time due to the movement of tectonic plates. 155 million years ago, a 5,000 kilometer long piece of the continent in western Australia broke off and drifted away. Since then, this piece of land, which was named “Argoland,” has been lost.
It is fairly certain that part of Australia broke away. Research knows this because the part of the continent that died left a gap: deep down in the ocean there is a hidden basin called the Argo abyssal plain. Deep sea plains usually run along continental margins, which is why the Argo deep sea plain shows that part of the continent is missing. But where has Argoland disappeared to? Researchers have been searching for the lost continent for many years – and have now apparently found it.
Researchers solve the mystery of Argoland: the vanished continent still exists
The structure of the seabed showed geologists Eldert Advokaat and Douwe van Hinsbergen from the University of Utrecht that the vanished continent must have drifted to the northwest. They therefore assumed it was around where the islands of Southeast Asia are today. However, there is no large, contiguous continent there – so where did Argoland disappear to 155 million years ago?
To solve the puzzle, the two geologists looked at the Southeast Asian islands. “We were literally dealing with islands of information, which is why our research took so long,” explains Advokaat in one notice his university. “We spent seven years putting the puzzle together.” Ultimately, the research duo came to an answer: Argoland has split into fragments but still exists. “Otherwise we would have a major scientific problem,” emphasizes the research team.
Continents change: Argoland disappears, other continents break in two
The situation in Southeast Asia is very different than in Africa or South America, for example, where a continent has broken cleanly into two parts. “Argoland shattered into many fragments. “That blocked our view of the journey of the continent,” explains Advokaat. The researchers realized that the fragments arrived at their current locations around the same time – this made it possible to reconstruct how they were once connected to each other. The small splinters and fragments formed a collage that shows: Argoland is now hidden beneath the green jungles of large parts of Indonesia and Myanmar.
According to the researchers, the fragmentation of Argoland is typical of the microcontinent: there was never a single, clearly demarcated and contiguous continent of Argoland, but rather microcontinental fragments separated by oceanic basins. In this respect, Argoland is similar to the vanished continent of Greater Adriatic, which has now almost completely sunk into the Earth’s mantle, or Zealandia, the largely submerged continent east of Australia. “The fragmentation of Argoland began around 300 million years ago,” says Van Hinsbergen.
The research results of the two geologists were in the specialist journal Gondwana Research published. (tab)
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