Last updated: 01.11.2023, 05:00 a.m.
By: Tanja Banner
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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 broke away from Australia 155 million years ago – and has disappeared ever since. But in doing so, he has 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, in western Australia, an approximately 5000-kilometre-long piece of the continent broke off and drifted away. Since then, this piece of land, which was given the name "Argoland", had been lost.
It is quite certain that a part of Australia has detached itself. Research knows this because the part of the continent that has said goodbye has left a gap: deep down in the ocean, there is a hidden basin, the Argo deep-sea plain. Deep-sea plains usually run along the 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 what they are looking for.
Researchers solve the mystery of Argoland: Disappeared continent still exists
The structure of the seafloor 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 to be roughly where the islands of Southeast Asia are located today. However, there is no large, contiguous continent there – so where did Argoland disappear to 155 million years ago?
To solve the mystery, the two geologists looked at the Southeast Asian islands. "We were dealing with information islands in the truest sense of the word, which is why our research took so long," explains Advokaat in a press release from his university. "We spent seven years putting the puzzle together." Eventually, the research duo came up with an answer: Argoland has split into fragments, but still exists. "Otherwise, we would have a major scientific problem," the research team emphasizes.
Continents change: Argoland disappears, other continents break in two
The situation in Southeast Asia is very different from that in Africa or South America, for example, where a continent is neatly broken in two. "Argoland splintered into many fragments. This blocked our view of the continent's journey," Advokaat continues. The researchers realized that the fragments arrived at their current locations around the same time, allowing them to reconstruct how they were once connected to each other. The small splinters and fragments formed a collage that shows that Argoland is now hidden under 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 delineated and contiguous continent of Argoland, but rather microcontinental fragments separated by oceanic basins. In this respect, Argoland resembles the vanished continent of Greater Adriatic, which is now almost completely submerged in the Earth's mantle, or Zealandia, the largely submerged continent east of Australia. "The fragmentation of Argoland began about 300 million years ago," says Van Hinsbergen.
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The research results of the two geologists were published in the journal Gondwana Research. (tab)