Breakthrough! Study Finds Earth May Only Have Six Continents, Not Seven.
For years, we’ve been taught in school that there are seven continents on Earth: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America. However, a ground breaking study led by Dr. Jordan Phethean from the University of Derby suggests that this traditional division might be wrong.
New Research Challenges Old Ideas
The study published in Gondwana Research questions the long-held belief that North America and Europe are separate continents. According to Dr. Phethean and his team, the geological connection between North America and Europe, divided by the Atlantic Ocean, might not be as clear-cut as we once thought.
Traditionally, scientists believed that the tectonic plates earth of North America and Eurasia (Europe and Asia) had fully separated around 52 million years ago. However, the new research argues that these plates are still stretching apart, meaning that North America and Europe might still be part of a single, evolving landmass.
The Role of Iceland
At the center of this new theory is Iceland. Known for its volcanic activity, Iceland was long thought to have formed about 60 million years ago at the mid-Atlantic ridge—the boundary between the North American and Eurasian plates. Scientists traditionally believed this ridge formed as a result of a hot mantle plume.
However, Dr. Phethean’s team suggests that earth this process does not fully support the idea of North America and Europe having separated. Instead, they believe that Iceland, along with the Greenland-Iceland-Faroes Ridge (GIFR), contains geological fragments from both the North American and European plates.
A New Geological Concept
This new view proposes that these regions are not separate landforms but interconnected pieces of a larger continental structure. The scientists have coined the term “Rifted Oceanic Magmatic Plateau” (ROMP) to describe this feature. If their theory is correct, it could change how we think about the formation and separation of continents.
Dr. Phethean has called this discovery the Earth Science equivalent of finding the Lost City of Atlantis, as his team uncovered “fragments of a lost continent” hidden beneath the sea.
The Future of the Theory
While the research is still in its early stages, the team plans to conduct further tests, including analyzing volcanic rocks from Iceland and using computer simulations to refine their findings. This study builds on Phethean’s previous work, where he discovered a hidden “proto-microcontinent” beneath the Davis Strait between Canada and Greenland.
As scientists continue to study these findings, it could reshape our understanding of Earth’s continents and how they evolve over time. The very map of the world we know today might soon need to be updated.
