Iceland is probably the last remnant of a continent that sank beneath the North Atlantic Ocean about 10 million years ago. This has just been stated by an international team of geophysicists and geologists.
This theory is contrary to the old idea of the formation of Iceland and the North Atlantic. But researchers say that the theory is based on both the geological features of the ocean floor and why the earth’s crust beneath Iceland is much thicker than it should be.
Meanwhile, other experts not affiliated with the study say they doubt that Iceland exists based on the evidence gathered so far.
Yet, if geological studies prove the theory, radical new ideas about a submerged continent could have implications for the seizure of ownership of every fuel found under the ocean floor, held by state-owned international law that could show its continental crust extends so far. .
"The area of continental material below it, stretches from Greenland to Scandinavia. The western and eastern parts are now submerged below the water surface, but still stand higher than they should. If sea level drops 600 meters, then we will see more land above the surface. the sea, ”said Gillian Foulger, lead author and professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Durham.
The lost continent
The North Atlantic region is the dry land that formed the super continent of Pangea from about 335 million to 175 million years ago, Foulger said.
Geologists have long thought that the North Atlantic Ocean basin formed when Pangea began to rupture 200 million years ago. In addition, Iceland formed about 60 million years ago on a volcano near the center of the ocean.
But Foulger and his fellow writers have different theories. They say oceans began to form about south and north of Iceland when Pangea broke out. On the other hand, geologists write, the areas to the west and east remain connected with the areas that are now Greenland and Scandinavia.
“People have a very simple idea that a tectonic plate is like a dinner plate, which just splits in two and splits,” Foulger said.
"Plate tectonics isn't that simple. Like pizza or artwork made from different materials, some of the components that make it up can be here or left there, so different parts have different strengths," he explained.
IcelandPhoto: Live Science
According to a new theory put forward by Foulger and his colleagues, Pangea did not split cleanly, and the lost continent of Iceland remained a 300 km-wide piece of dry land on the waves until about 10 million years ago. In the end, the eastern and western ends of Iceland also sank, and only Iceland remained.
His theory would explain why the rock crust beneath modern Iceland is about 40 km thick, instead of about 8 km as predicted if Iceland was formed on top of a volcanic mass.
"When we considered the possibility that this thick crust was a continent, our data suddenly made sense. This made us immediately realize that the area of the continent is much larger than Iceland itself. There are continents hidden under the sea," he said.
Foulger and his team estimate that Iceland once stretched 600,000 square kilometers of land between Greenland and Scandinavia. Today, Iceland measures about 103,000 square km.
They also predicted there would be adjacent territories of the same size, forming ‘Greater Iceland’, to the west of what is now England and Ireland. But the region also sank under the waves.
The study’s authors say fossil evidence suggests that some crops are spread by dropping similar seeds in Greenland and Scandinavia. These findings reinforce the idea that a large number of drylands once connected the two regions.
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