Lurking beneath New Zealand is a long-hidden continent, geologists now propose. They call it Zealandia. Don’t expect it to soon end up on a map on your classroom wall, though. Nobody is in charge of officially designating a new continent.
Scientists will have to judge for themselves if Zealandia should be added to the ranks of continents.A team of geologists pitched the scientific case for judging this a new continent in the March/April issue of GSA Today. Zealandia is a continuous expanse of continental crust. It covers some 4.9 million square kilometers (1.9 million square miles). That’s about the size of the Indian subcontinent. But it would be the smallest of the world’s continents. And unlike the others, around 94 percent of Zealandia hides beneath the ocean. Only New Zealand, New Caledonia and a few small islands peek above the waves over it.
“If we could pull the plug on the world’s oceans, it would be quite clear that Zealandia stands out,” says study coauthor Nick Mortimer. He is a geologist at GNS Science in Dunedin, New Zealand. Zealandia rises about 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) above the surrounding ocean crust, he notes. “If it wasn’t for the ocean level,” he says, “long ago we’d have recognized Zealandia for what it was — a continent.”
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This landmass, directly east of Australia, will face an uphill battle for continent status. New planets and slices of geologic time have international panels that can officially name them. But there is no such group to officially validate new continents. The current number of continents is already vague. Most everyone agrees on five of them: Africa, Antarctica, Australia and North and South America. Some people, however, combine the last two — Europe and Asia — into one huge Eurasia. There’s no formal way to add Zealandia to this mix. Proponents will just have to start using the term and hope it catches on, Mortimer says.
This odd path forward stems from the simple fact that nobody expected another continent would ever need to be added, says Keith Klepeis. He is a structural geologist…
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