A long lost continent had just been found and everyone is now probably wondering, "how on earth does one lose a continent?!" Considering all the significant features that a continent can possess such as mountains and forests among other things, it definitely is quite a wonder as to how an earth can lose an entire continent with people not knowing much about it. But apparently, it did happen and thankfully, with the ingenious efforts of the world's leading geologists and scientists, a once-lost continent has now been found.
Now the island country of Mauritius is known for several things. First of all, it is definitely one of the smallest countries on earth with only 790 so mi or approximately 2,040. Secondly, it hosts some of the finest beaches on earth! However, while most people are attracted to the island for recreational and touring purposes, the island has attracted geologists and other scientists due to its strong gravitational pull. What one should know about gravitational pulls is that it varies from place to place. Some places like Mauritius can have a stronger gravitational pull while others have weaker. It all depends on how dense the local crust material is.
According to TIME, geoscientist Lewis Ashwal along with his colleagues has concluded that there was, in fact, a great piece of land that had existed several million years ago between India and Madagascar. They had claimed that this piece of land was part of a supercontinent called Gondwanaland some 200 million years ago and that when it broke apart parts of it fractured into ribbons and then sank into the ocean. When the land sank, it created mass concentrations and afterward, the volcanic eruption would then lead to the creation of Mauritius.
The moon has several mass concentrations, often called "mascons," caused by the meteorites that had crashed into its surface and buried some of their particles on the site where they crashed. Here on earth, mascons are created from plate tectonics instead of heavy meteorites crashing into the surface. Mauritius is stated to be sitting atop one such mascon and this theory was further supported by Lewis Ashwal and in a recent publication on Nature Communications, he just confirmed the validity of his claim after studying 13 small grains of Zircon.
Geologists have discovered 2 billion-year-old zirconium on the beaches of Mauritius and since the island is only about 8 million years into existence, the zirconium could not have come from the island and instead, it was brought upon by the volcanic eruptions from under the ocean where the lost continent had sunk.
