Monday, February 25, 2013

The Lost Continent Under the Indian Ocean

There is a lost continent under the Indian Ocean. It's old -- Precambrian, to be precise -- and it's fragmented, but some nifty chemistry helped make the connections that it must be there. Here's the story. Key to the narrative is the fact that they found very old sand on a relatively new island beach nearby. This very old sand is from an ancient continent shattered on the seafloor. The scientists have named it Mauritia, but I think it should be called Numenor. Oh well, I went into the wrong field for naming lost continents.

The reason this is a blast from the past for me in more ways than one is that I just found a self-bound book I wrote in the 5th grade titled Bendiana Stretch and the Lost Continent. It's, um, not very good, but it does show that the romantic notion of a lost continent has all-ages appeal, and it's a funny coincidence.

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