
Zealandia: An eighth continent under New Zealand? - snake117
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39000936
======
macintux
Finally. This same story from various sources has been submitted a half dozen
times at least, glad it finally got some traction.

Poor Zealandia is _always_ under-appreciated.

[http://worldmapswithout.nz/](http://worldmapswithout.nz/)

~~~
keithnz
yus! rest of the world, we are big damnit! BIG I tell you! we have our own
whole continent, it's a bit wet...but, still :)

------
peterbecich
Reminds me of this subducted tectonic plate:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Plate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Plate)

~~~
nerdponx
The fact that this is apparently consensus and not a crackpot theory is the
most amazing thing about it. The little kid in me is kind of wishing I had
gone into geology...

------
mjfl
It would be cool to have another ice age. I prefer the cold and you would get
to have land masses like this suddenly surface!

~~~
mc32
Where would like half the earth's population move to, if things happened quick
enough for you to experience the results of a new ice age? Like Half or
Eurasia and North America would be covered in ice...

~~~
manarth
The Day After Tomorrow shows Mexico offering refuge to the USA. Shame
someone's building a massive wall the length of the border…

~~~
lacampbell
You are aware that "The Day After Tomorrow" was a fictional movie, right? It's
a dramatisation set in the real world. Fantasy Mexico can do all manner of
things.

------
smoyer
Aren't the other seven continents the dominant land-mass on a separately
defined tectonic plate? According to the article there's no agreed upon
definition.

In general, it's pretty easy to reclassify almost anything if you're willing
to promote a new definition.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
it might be a coincidence but all names of continents start and end with the
same letter, the new one doesn't quite fit with this rule either.

~~~
dogma1138
It's easy just drop the last letter in New Zealand

~~~
keithnz
which is kind of how we say it. Kiwis are "optimized" speakers, we don't like
words that make our mouth do too much work, so we optimize by smoothing out
big changes. In this case it's common to hear the 'd' almost completely gone.
Nu Zeelun :)

------
mc32
It kind of looks, from that map, that is could also be classified or
considered a part of the Australian continent, given the "continent" mostly
falls within the Australian plate.

~~~
niftich
The paper disagrees. Quote:

 _The edges of Australia and Zealandia continental crust approach to within 25
km across the Cato Trough (Fig. 2). The Cato Trough is 3600 m deep and floored
by oceanic crust (Gaina et al., 1998; Exon et al., 2006). The Australian and
Zealandian COBs [continent-ocean boundaries] here coincide with, and have been
created by, the Cato Fracture Zone along which there has been ~150 km of
dextral strike slip movement, linking Paleogene spreading centers in the
Tasman and Coral seas (Fig. 2; Gaina et al., 1998). This spatial and tectonic
separation, along with intervening oceanic crust, means that the Zealandia
continental crust is physically separate from that of Australia. If the Cato
Trough did not exist, then the content of this paper would be describing the
scientific advance that the Australian continent was 4.9 Mkm2 larger than
previously thought._

~~~
mc32
I wonder whether geologically they are separate or was that trough created
after the plate formed --that is is it a contiguous mass with an eroded trough
or were these separate masses mashed together via tectonics?

~~~
niftich
See their Figure 5 [1] where they hypothesize how Zealandia was formed from
the breakup of Gondwana, before which it did in fact lie adjacent to what
later became a separate 'Australia' continent. Some of the definitions are
complicated by the fact that continents join and break up, and their
continuity across multiple continental cycles is not a given -- but that of
cratons is, which are sort of an inner core of really old rocks that managed
to survive all sorts of tectonic abuse. Zealandia has yet to be shown to
contain a craton, presence of which would probably result in its undisputed
acceptance as a continent. All of today's "classical" continents are
amalgamations of contiguous continental crust around one or more neighboring
cratons. See the 'Geology' section for discussion.

[1]
[https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/27/3/figure/GSAT...](https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/27/3/figure/GSATG321A.1-f05.htm)

------
transfire
Real continents
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates)

------
DiabloD3
So, what I'm wondering is, why is this its own continent, and the Indian
subcontinent isn't considered one?

~~~
niftich
India is a former continent underlain by its own craton and its own tectonic
plate that has collided with the much larger Eurasian plate in the epic
Himalayan orogeny [1]. Eurasia is a multi-plate continent that forms a
continuous expanse of continental crust that has geologically interacted with
parts of itself for millions of years.

On the other hand, Zealandia is a continent which broke away from Gondwana
(much like India did) and has since stood independently apart, not accreting
to any other continent.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_orogeny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_orogeny)

~~~
bonzini
So it's because it's moving away from Australia, rather than towards it?

------
pwdisswordfish
If it's mostly underwater, why not call it Atlantis?

------
transfire
Geologists trying to gain relevance by toying with definitions. Not unlike,
and even less significant than, the astronomical reclassification of Pluto as
a dwarf-planet. Sign of the times I suppose.

