Digging Up Ancient AnswersBelonging to the Mascarene Islands archipelago, the island of Mauritius is
Digging Up Ancient AnswersBelonging to the Mascarene Islands archipelago, the island of Mauritius is located approximately 1,200 miles (2,000 km) southeast off the coast of Africa. Considered a relatively new landmass, it was formed between 8-9 million years ago by enormous underwater volcanic eruptions. In 2013, Lewis Ashwal and his colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa proposed the volcanic island is sitting upon an ancient sunken microcontinent known as Mauritia. This “lost continent” would have once connected India to Madagascar, being a part of the larger Gondwana supercontinent.“Earth is made up of two parts – continents, which are old, and oceans, which are young,” Ashwal explains. “Mauritius is an island and there is no rock older than 9 million years old on the island. However, by studying the rocks on the island we have found zircons that are as old as 3 billion years.” These newly discovered zircon crystals were dug up within the crust of a rocky outcrop in Mauritius which had been covered in molten lava since the time of the island’s birth. The theory is these could quite possibly be remnants of Mauritia.Zircon is a common gemstone which can come in a variety of colors including colorless. Zircons form mainly from the granites of ancient continents. The fact alone that these crystals are made up of zircon is enough for researchers to conclude they did not originate from the ocean below.Other zircon crystals on Mauritius’ beaches have been found to be close to 2 billion years old and now Ashwal and his team of researchers claim these newly discovered crystals are even older. “The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent,” says Ashwal. There has also been evidence found of several pieces of the continent found off the coast of western Australia, as well as underneath Iceland.These findings help to explain the mystery of why there are parts of the Indian Ocean with stronger gravitational fields than other parts, potentially an indication of thicker crusts in such areas. “The fact that we found the ancient zircons in rock corroborates the previous study and refutes any suggestion of wind-blown, wave-transported or pumice-rafted zircons for explaining the earlier results,” states Ashwal.More studies will eventually give us more answers to this large Earth puzzle. Just one of many as we continue to search the secrets of this planet we live on.–MiImage Credit – http://bit.ly/2jvITswSource – http://bit.ly/2krkYcW -- source link
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