Researchers Found 'Lost continent' Under Indian Ocean, Forget Atlantis?

New research confirms that an ancient continent about 3 billion years old has been uncovered under the Indian Ocean. Reportedly, the discovered continent lies under the Indian Ocean in the island of Mauritius. With this finding, scientists say to forget Atlantis.

According to usatoday, the continent is called "Mauritia" by geologists, and apparently is part of what we know today as Madagascar and India. Accordingly, the other parts of the continent probably sank under the sea some 84 million years ago. It is said that the break-up process of the continents is being studied in order to understand the geological history of planet Earth.

Researchers say that "Mauritia" was possibly a part of the gargantuan supercontinent Gondwana before breaking up into Antarctica, Africa, Australia and South America. Apparently, the evidence to the discovery is the unearthing of an ancient mineral on Mauritius that is not supposed to be there. The mineral zircon is found in rocks emitted up by lava during volcanic eruptions. Accordingly, the fragments of this mineral are very much older for it to belong to the island of Mauritius, that is only a few million years old. It is said that the recently discovered zircon crystals on the island were estimated to age at 3 billion years. This is said to logically mean that the much older crystal materials under Mauritius originates from the super continent.

Furthermore, newsjs reported that the breakup probably was not just a simple splitting of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, but could perhaps be a complex break-up, leaving fragments of the continental crust to drift in the basin of the evolving Indian Ocean. It is further said that critics contend that the minerals might have been blown there by trade winds. But accordingly, the new exploration finds these zircons embedded in 6-million-year-old rocks that rules out wind or water current transfer.