Geography nerds may need to sit down for this news: earth has an eighth continent.
The eight continent is mostly underwater. No—it’s not Atlantis.
Termed Zealandia, it stretches from the Pacific to the Tasman and Coral Seas. The only promontories jutting above the surface of the ocean with any sizable population are New Zealand and New Caledonia.
Following extensive geological mapping of the seabed of the vast expanse of ocean, scientists now believe Zealandia was part of Gondwana, the large fragment of the supercontinent Pangea that began to break up some 800 million years ago. A large portion, comprising landmasses that now include modern day Australia and Antarctica, drifted away.
Over time—scientists estimate between 79 and 83 million years ago—as Antarctica broke away from Australia, the remaining land was stretched so thin it submerged under the ocean—imagine a pizza crust stretching too thin until it easily breaks. The result is a large underwater shelf of ecological wealth (including the clues that led the scientists to learn of Zealandia’s existence).
To determine the boundaries and formation of Zealandia, scientists dredged the sea floor in various underwater and above-water parts of the region, dating the rocks and observing magnetic anomalies to determine their origin and how they came to arrive at their present location. Their study was published in the journal Tectonics.
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If Zealandia is considered a microcontinent, it would be by far the world’s largest.
There’s also an interesting issue with the naming convention. Zealandia derives from the name New Zealand, an anglicized version of Nova Zeelandia, the Latinized name given to the pair of islands by Dutch map makers after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman made first European contact in 1643. As European explorers and mapmakers were wont to do in those days, the islands were named after a province in what is today the Netherlands.
In the indigenous Māori language, the country is referred to as Aotearoa (Land of the Long White Cloud). In some circles—including common use by the country’s current government—the name is styled “Aotearoa New Zealand”.
Fittingly, there is also a Māori name for Zealandia–Te Riu-a-Māui—meaning “the hills, valleys, and plains of Maui.” Maui is a demigod in verbal traditions across Polynesia, from New Zealand to Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, Mangareva, and Hawai‘i.
The presence of the submerged continental shelf is nothing new. The name Zealandia was first used to describe it in the 1990s. Even then, scientists already knew much of the tectonic makeup of the islands, “The more or less continuous landmass that appears above the waves is the upthrust welt that marks the seam between two lithospheric plates. Our country is not merely a sea-girt realm, it is a veritable kingdom of the deep,” exclaimed Dr. Ian Reilly in 1994.
Scientists have had an idea since advances in undersea exploration allowed a better look at the seabed from the 1960s. The region is also an economic boon to New Zealand, home to substantial fisheries, oil and gas, and seabed mineral resources.
The exceptionally keen can go to a website operated by the New Zealand government for a wealth of data concerning the geology, tectonics, and bathymetry (that’s the study of the ocean floor) of Zealandia / Te Riu-a-Māui.
While New Zealand and New Caledonia are both part of the submerged continent, their human histories are quite different. The first human inhabitants of New Caledonia (which is today a collectivity of France) are believed to have settled in the islands as early as 1600 BCE. New Zealand, in contrast, is the last large landmass on earth to be settled by humans. Polynesian settlers from modern day French Polynesia are estimated to have first arrived between 1280 and 1350 CE. The Māori languages spoken in New Zealand, Niue, and the Cook Islands are mutually intelligible with Tahitian.
Travelers wanting to explore the above-water parts of New Zealand can plan their journey by visiting New Zealand.com.