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Geoscientists have discovered a continent that has been hiding in plain sight for almost 375 years.
Historically there has been speculation about the existence of a continent called Zealandia, or Te Riu a Maui in Maori.
according to TN News, ZealandiaIt covers an area of 1.89 million square miles. Over 500 million years ago, it was part of a supercontinent called Gondwana that included most of western Antarctica and eastern Australia.
It was first discovered in 1642 by Dutch businessman and sailor Abel Tasman in his desperate quest to find the “great southern continent”.
Although he was unable to find any new land, he did meet with local Māori people who were initially uneasy about his arrival, but provided him with valuable information about the surrounding lands, including the presence of a large landmass to the east.
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It wasn’t until 2017 that geologists discovered the continent had been hiding in plain sight all this time.
Scientists agree on Zealandia’s existence, but it started to “move away” from Gondwana, and scientists are still trying to figure out why.
Much of the newly discovered continent lies below sea level, and geologists from New Zealand’s National Science Centre (GNS Science) say it’s an example of how something “very obvious” can take a long time to be discovered.
“[It’s] “It’s a process we don’t fully understand yet, but Zealandia has started to pull apart,” Tulloch explained.
“It’s kind of cool,” joked his colleague Nick Mortimer, who led the study, adding: “If you think about it, every continent on Earth has different countries. [but] Zealandia only has three territories.”
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