Argoland: This continent was lost 155 million years ago. We finally know where it is now

When dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the planet looked different as there were supercontinents. The Pangea, Gondwana, and Pannotia were the three most recent supercontinents. A supercontinent is defined as a single landmass that contains at least 75 per cent of all land on Earth. Geologists believe that more supercontinents existed before these three - Nuna (or Columbia), Rodinia, and Ur.

A new study says that the continent of Argoland, which apparently vanished after splitting from Australia 155 million years ago, has finally been discovered. It formerly bordered northeastern Australia around 155 million years ago, during the Jurassic period.

When the division of the continent happens, it is typically marked by ancient fossils, minerals, and mountain ranges. However, scientists have been able to find out where Argoland had ended up.

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This is a significant development as scientists for decades have been puzzled by the disappearance of Argoland, which is a massive 3,000-mile-long island.

The scientists are sure that it existed because of the 'void', which is also known as the Argo Abyssal Plain. It is left behind in the form of a basin hidden deep under the ocean.

The study said that the ruins which were scattered of this ancient landmass are buried beneath parts of Southwest Asian nations like Indonesia and Myanmar.

The team of researchers has answered the mystery of Argoland's disappearance using paleomagnetic observations.

Eldert Advokaat and Douwe van Hinsbergen, the geologists at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, said that Argoland's crust began to splinter into what they call an "Argopelago" of smaller islands as early as 300 million years ago, when Antarctica, South America, Africa, Australia, and India were all part of a supercontinent Gondwana.

In the study published this month in Gondwana Research, the authors have said that they now "identified the Gondwana-derived blocks and mega-units of Southwest Borneo, Greater Paternoster, East Java, South Sulawesi, West Burma, and Mount Victoria Land as fragments that collectively may represent fragments of Argoland".

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As quoted by The Weather Channel, Advokaat, the lead author of the study, said: "The situation in Southeast Asia is very different from places like Africa and South America, where a continent broke neatly into two pieces." He added, "Argoland splintered into many different shards. That obstructed our view of the continent's journey."

In a call with Motherboard, Advokaat said that the "big thing is that we can now say that we know the amount of crust that was here, we know that it was really highly extended, and we can account for it in the geologic record that we find in Southeast Asia".

He said, "We don't lose continents without a trace. We can still find them and that means that we can still make reasonably reliable reconstructions of what the Earth looked like back in the deep geological past."

(With inputs from agencies)