Mysterious ancient ‘lost continent’ discovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean

If you thought knowledge of the world’s continents was pretty
basic stuff, better have a rethink.

Scientists believe they have found the remains of an ancient continent lying on the bottom of the Indian Ocean, somewhere between India and Madagascar.

Mauritia was a small continent – about the quarter of the size of Madagascar – until about 85 million years ago, when the two countries it was positioned between began to move apart, stretching it and causing it to break up.

The first clues to its existence were discovered in 2013, when 

scientists realised some parts of the Indian Ocean had a 

stronger gravitational pull than others.

It was later determined this could be down to chunks of 

sunken land sinking to the ocean bed and the idea of an old 

continent was born.

Further investigations found Mauritius had a particularly 

strong pull and it was theorised it could be sat on an ancient 

land mass itself.

Although the island is only eight million years old, some 

crystals on its beaches were found to be as old as three billion 

years and are thought to have been pulled up from the ocean 

bed by volcanic activity.

‘It’s like plasticine: when continents are stretched they become 

thinner and split apart,’ Martin Van Kranendonk at the 

University of New South Wales told New Scientist.

‘It’s these thin pieces that sink below the ocean.’

Mauritia isn’t the worlds only old continent, with further 

evidence found near Iceland and off Western Australia.