The continent of Argoland, which seemingly vanished after splitting from Australia 155 million years ago, has finally been discovered, according to a new study. Researchers have long known that a landmass rifted from Australia many million years ago. However, up until now, scientists had been unable to find where Argoland had ended up. Now researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands believe that they have uncovered the mysterious landmass, hiding under the easter islands of Southeast Asia.
"We knew it had to be somewhere north of Australia, so we expected to find it in Southeast Asia," lead study author Eldert Advokaat, a researcher in the Department of Earth Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told Live Science.
According to the outlet, the team of researchers reconstructed the breakaway continent's journey and found fragments of ancient land scattered around Indonesia and Myanmar. However, when they tried to reconstruct Argoland out of these fragments, "nothing fit," Mr Advokaat said.
Researchers then worked backwards, gathering evidence in Southeast Asia to retrace Argoland's northward journey. They studied the scattered fragments of the ancient land and discovered the remnants of small oceans dating roughly 200 million years ago. They found that the lost continent disintegrated as tectonic forces stretched the landmass out and drove it away from the rest of the continent, before scattering it across Southeast Asia.
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Working on this hypothesis, the researchers said that Argoland hadn't really disappeared but in fact had survived as a "very extended and fragmented ensemble" under the islands to the east of Indonesia. Mr Advokaat and his Utrecht University colleague geologist Douwe van Hinsbergen coined a new term to define the Argoland more precisely: an '"Argopelago".
Now, researchers believe that their new study may shed light on the region's past climate, which would have cooled as oceans formed between the shreds of Argoland. It could also explain the uneven distribution of species along an invisible buried that runs through Indonesia. Overall, piecing together Argoland is "a springboard for new research," Mr Advokaat said.