A lost piece of land that broke off and fell to the bottom of the ocean 155 million years ago has been found. The discovery of the land has been like finding the missing piece of a puzzle for geologists studying the way Earth’s continents have changed over time. The almost 5000km-wide piece of land called “Argoland” is believed to have broken off Australia as part of the continental drift (大陆漂移) that occurred in the Jurassic period when dinosaurs such as the Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus lived on the Earth.
Geologists (地质学家) Eldert Advokaat and Douwe van Hinsbergen from Utrecht University in the Netherlands found the lost land deep in the Indian Ocean. They said Argoland had been very arduous to find and that some scientists had questioned whether it had fallen into the Earth’s mantle (地幔), the layer beneath the crust. The two geologists said they believe it broke off from Australia and then drifted toward Southeast Asia. But this theory had been impossible to prove until the land was discovered.
Another theory was that small pieces of the land had started to break off 300 million years ago. But, an empty area off Australia called the Argo Abyssal Plain, made geologists believe the missing piece of the lost continent could still be out there. When they found the missing piece of land, they were finally able to piece together enough evidence to prove it was real.
Hinsbergen said being able to piece together the way continents formed and broke apart was important because it helped scientists understand how the planet’s biological diversity and climate had evolved over time. It also helped scientists to understand how mountains had formed and how plate tectonics(板块构造) worked. Hinsbergen said the discovery of Argoland proved the land hadn’t disappeared into the mantle. If that theory had not been proved wrong it would have caused “a major scientific problem”, he said.
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