Forget what you learned in elementary school geography, Earth apparently doesn’t have seven continents after all. A new study suggests that we only have six continents.
The research focuses on the geological processes behind the breakup of Europe and North America, and how these landmasses have evolved over time. The study’s lead author, Dr. Jordan Phethean, found that the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates have not yet actually broken apart, as previously thought to have happened 52 million years ago.
Instead, these plates are still in the process of breaking apart, rather than being wholly separate entities. This means that North America and Europe could be considered a single continent, rather than two distinct ones.
The study also challenges the theory about Iceland’s formation. Instead of forming as a result of the mid-Atlantic ridge 60 million years ago, it suggests that Iceland, along with the Greenland-Iceland-Faroes Ridge, contains geological fragments from both European and North American tectonic plates.
This new discovery has been coined the term “Rifted Oceanic Magmatic Plateau” (ROMP) and could have fundamental implications for how we perceive the formation and separation of Earth’s continents.
Source: https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/earth-number-of-contients-2668946070