After nearly 400 years of research, geographers and geologists announced in the past years the discovery of a new continent, which had been missing for hundreds of years, called “Zealandia”.
This lost continent was searched for by sailors and explorers in the past, and their attempts failed miserably.
It turned out that the continent, which has an area of regarding 4.9 million square kilometers, lies mostly under water.
The vast continent was also part of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent, which also included most of western Antarctica and eastern Australia, more than 500 million years ago.
However, approximately 105 million years ago, Zealandia began to “pull away” from the supercontinent for reasons geologists still do not fully understand.
Andy Tulloch, a geoscientist at the Crown Zealand Research Institute who discovered the continent in 2017, explained:[إنها] A process we didn’t fully understand until now, when Zealandia separated from the supercontinent.”
Over the years, the continent of Zealandia began to sink under the waves, leaving more than 94 percent of it under water for thousands of years.