Sunken Continent Theory Explains the Origin of Iceland; Could Affect Future Fuel Claims

According to a new theory formulated by a multinational and multidisciplinary research team suggests that the land we now know as Iceland is the tip of a continent that has since sunken into the North Atlantic Ocean.

The new theory suggests that the existence of Icelandia - a sunken continent the size of Texas that sank some 10 million years ago - could explain the geological features found in the ocean floor as well as the reason why the Earth's crust under Iceland is a lot thicker than it's supposed to be. Additionally, the new theory proposes a new alternative aside from existing notions about how Iceland was formed.

Researchers detail the new, radical Iceland theory in "Icelandia," a chapter in the upcoming book "In the Footsteps of Warren B. Hamilton: New Ideas in Earth Science," set to be released next year.

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Far-Reaching Effects of the New Icelandia Theory

Although the new theory might be backed by geological studies, the idea of a sunken continent with Iceland as its last remnant might have future implications for addressing fuel discovery and exploration disputes under its seafloor. Existing international laws dictate that resources found on the seafloor belong to the country that can prove that their continental crust covers the contested area.

"The region that's got continental material underneath, it stretched from Greenland to Scandinavia," says "Icelandia" lead author and British geologist Gillian Foulger in an interview. Foulger also serves as Durham University's emeritus professor of geophysics. "Some of it in the west and east has now sunk below the surface of the water, but it's still standing higher than it should. ... If the sea level dropped 600 meters [2,000 feet], then we would see a lot more land above the surface of the ocean."

Rediscovering a Lost Continent

Foulger additionally explains that the water-filled region of the North Atlantic was also once dry land, a part of the supercontinent Pangaea from 335 to 175 million years ago. According to a 2014 study in the Geological Society, the landmasses that would become Europe and North America separated at the final Pangaea break up during the early Cenozoic, forming the North Atlantic Ocean. Additionally, geologists long believed that the basin of the North Atlantic Ocean started forming 200 million years ago, with Iceland forming 60 million years ago, above a volcanic plume under the waters.

However, in the new theory, the authors raise a new possibility: that the oceans started forming south and north of what used to be the sunken continent Icelandia, but not in the west and east. These directions that didn't immediately fill with water were the connections to Greenland and Scandinavia. While tectonic plates are often visualized as discrete masses of land, Foulger explains that the mass underneath a continent is more like a "pizza, or a piece of artwork" that could break off in any direction, with different sections having different material strengths.

In their estimate, the now sunken continent might have covered as far as 230,000 square miles (600,000 square kilometers) of dry land between Greenland and Scandinavia.