Around 23 million years ago, Zealandia, the eighth continent of the world, began to sink.
Its crust is completely submerged beneath the ocean.
Geologists have known for a while that New Zealand and New Caledonia have similar geology, but now they realize they actually share more than that–the two land masses sit on the same submerged island.
In 2017, a team of geologists argued that the mass of continental crust they termed Zealandia was best described geologically as its own continent.
Roughly 94 percent of Zealandia’s crust is submerged under the ocean, with the notable exception of New Zealand, New caledonia, and a few other small islands.
The scientists explain in a paper published in Tectonics that extensive thinning of the crust took place during the breakup of Gondwana about 80 million years earlier.
Now mostly submerged, there is evidence that once lived a wide variety of plants and animals on Zealandia.
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