A submerged continent is a continent or a large landmass that is predominantly under water. There are two known submerged continents, the Kerguelen Plateau and Zealandia. In theory, rising levels of the sea are thought to have caused the sinking of the submerged lands. Though sea level rise might be somewhat of a contributing factor to the flooding of Zealandia, one cannot rule out another contributing factor — Plate Tectonics.

Once part of the same land mass as Antarctica and Australia, the lost continent of Zealandia broke off millions of so-called years ago and eventually sank below the ocean, where it stayed largely hidden for centuries.

According to geologists, Zealandia was a shifting land mass, about half the size of Australia, and was home to dinosaurs and lush rain-forests.

During a period of dramatic geological change, the Pacific Plate – the world’s largest tectonic plate – is believed to have sank below the continental crust of Zealandia. A process, called subduction, caused the root of the Australian continent to break off and sink as well, according to the National Science Foundation, a US government research agency.

Bruce Luyendyk came up with the theory and the name of Zealandia in 1995. The landmass is thought to have once been completely submerged about 23 million years ago, but today around 93% of the land surface is below sea level. Zealandia has an area of about 1,900,000 square miles and is thought to be the biggest existing micro-continent.

In 2017 scientists argued that Zealandia has the characteristics of a continent and should be considered as such rather than a micro-continent. The total land area of Zealandia above water is 110,678 square miles, New Zealand and several neighboring islands make up 93% of the land area with an area of 103,471 square miles.

New Caledonia and its surrounding islands make up 7% of the continent’s land area at 7,172 square miles; the remainder of the area is made up of Elizabeth and Middleton reefs, Norfolk Island, and Lord Howe Island. The Zealandia population is estimated at five million.

The planet is a pretty active place. No one area is static and as a result of Plate Tectonics no one continent will maintain it’s shape or altitude above sea level for very long.

Zealandia is just one example of the many that shows proof of our ever evolving geography.

Other examples of some of the lands thought to have existed before getting submerged and lost include Sundaland, Dvaraka, Beringia, Maui Nui, Doggerland, Part of Malta, Strand, New Moore Island, Jordsand, Verdronken Land van Reimerswaal, Sarah Ann Island, Dunwich, Ferdinandea, and Ravenser Odd.

Explore the Geological Map of New Zealand

Doggerland was an extensive area of land that is now located beneath the North Sea. This massive area of land once connected Great Britain to mainland Europe.

According to a number of geological surveys, Doggerland stretched all the way from Britain’s eastern coast to modern-day Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany.

Archaeologists believe that there are countless artifacts at the bottom of the sea that need to be recovered in order to help them reconstruct what happened over 7,000 years ago. So far, vessels have brought to the surface remains of mammoth, lion, other land animals, and a number of prehistoric tools and weapons.

The area of land inhabited by ancient people was flooded by rising sea levels sometime around 18,000 and 5,500 BCE. Archaeologists believe that the area was a rich habitat for ancient human habitation during the Mesolithic Period.

Archaeologists refer to it as the real heartland of Europe. It was discovered by a team of researchers that include; climatologists, archaeologists, and geophysicists, who mapped Doggerland using new data provided by oil companies.

Divers belonging to the oil companies were responsible for making this incredible discovery. Researchers believe that this ancient land was once roamed by Mammoths and somewhat large human populations.

Recently, British scientists have started using 4D technology to explore this vast area of land in order to understand how it might have looked before it was inundated by rising sea levels over 7,000 years ago. 4D technology will allow researchers to not only find out more about the land but also about territories, colonies, and cultures dating back thousands of years.

Archaeologists believe the area spanned over 93,000 square miles and was inhabited by numerous prehistoric cultures.

Researchers have been able to precisely understand the type of vegetation that grew in the region, as well as what animals roamed Doggerland. Several artifacts have been recovered during numerous diving expeditions.

Researchers have also learned a great deal about the lifestyle and behavior of the inhabitants of Doggerland, and further exploration of the area will surely yield a wealth of information that will help scientists reconstruct this world that was lost under the sea many years ago.

Doggerland was named by University of Exeter archaeologist Bryony Coles in the 1990s after the Dogger Bank, a stretch of seabed in the North Sea in turn named after the 17th century “Dogger” fishing boats that sailed there.

You can learn more about Doggerland by visiting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland#Discovery_and_investigation_by_archaeologists

Cats are pretty interesting creatures.

“Room 8” ( 1947–1968 )

Room 8 was a neighborhood cat who wandered into a classroom in 1952 at Elysian Heights Elementary School in Echo Park, California.

He lived in the school during the school year and then disappeared for the summer, returning when classes started again.

This pattern continued without interruption until the mid-1960s.

News cameras would arrive at the school at the beginning of the year waiting for the cat’s return; he became famous and would receive up to 100 letters a day addressed to him at the school.

Eventually, he was featured in a documentary called Big Cat, Little Cat and a children’s book, A Cat Called Room 8.

Look magazine ran a three-page Room 8 feature by photographer Richard Hewett in November 1962, titled “Room 8: The School Cat”.

Leo Kottke wrote an instrumental called “Room 8” that was included in his 1971 album, Mudlark.

As he got older, Room 8 was injured in a cat fight and suffered from feline pneumonia, so a family near the school volunteered to take him in.

The school’s janitor would find him at the end of the school day and carry him across the street.

Room 8 died at the Lockhart Pet Hospital in Hollywood, California in 1968.

His obituary in the Los Angeles Times rivaled that of major political figures, running three columns with a photograph.

The cat was so famous that his obituary ran in papers as far away as Hartford, Connecticut.

The students raised the funds for his gravestone. He is buried at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, California.

Learn more about Room 8 by visiting http://web.archive.org/web/20230207154257/https://elysian-lausd-ca.schoolloop.com/room8

A California paleontologist has created an interactive map that allows people to see how far their hometowns have moved over 750 million years of continental drift.

Ian Webster says, “That the history of Earth is longer than we can conceive, and the current arrangement of plate tectonics and continents is an accident of time. It will be very different in the future, and Earth may outlast us all.”

Webster built the map as a web application that sits on top of another map which visualizes geological models created by geologist and paleogeographer Christopher Scotese. Scotese’s models describe plate tectonic development since 750 million years ago, not long after green algae first evolved in the Earth’s oceans.

Webster’s site also utilizes GPlates, a software used by geologists to visualize plate tectonic reconstructions and associated data through geological time.

Webster’s map visualization lets users enter their location and then plugs that location into plate tectonic models. The result is that users can see where towns and cities were located hundreds of millions of years ago. For example, you can pretty much see where any city in the world was located on the Pangea super continent.

When searching a location on the map, the website’s 3D rotatable globe will point out where on Earth that area was located million of years ago. The map will even show users what dinosaurs used to live nearby in the area they search.

You can visit the full globe on Ian’s site by clicking in the Full Globe link in the above graphic or by following this link if your phone doesn’t show the above graphic: https://www.dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth/#0

GPlates

GPlates and pyGPlates are both free software (also known as open-source software), licensed for distribution under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2.

GPlately is a Python package which enables the reconstruction of data through deep geological time (points, lines, polygons, and rasters), the interrogation of plate kinematic information (plate velocities, rates of subduction and seafloor spreading), the rapid comparison between multiple plate motion models, and the plotting of reconstructed output data on maps.

GPlates is funded by AuScope:

GPlates development by the EarthByte Project is part of the AuScope infrastructure-development programme. AuScope Ltd is a non-profit company formed to facilitate the implementation of a world-class infrastructure system for earth science, funded by the Australian Government under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

You can visit the Dinosaur database here: https://dinosaurpictures.org/