Member-only story
Experts Identify a Sunken Eighth Continent
They call it Zealandia
We’re taught many things about the world in school, from geography to science and math. Then we continue on with our lives without thinking much about any of it. But scientists continue discovering things that jostle what we once learned, and suddenly our school-day knowledge about the world is outdated.
For instance, you likely learned in school that Earth’s land masses form seven continents — North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica. Yet scientists have recently confirmed an eighth continent, one that is 94 percent submerged. The only land above the ocean’s surface makes up New Zealand and a few other nearby islands.
Suspicion of Existence
Whispered rumors of a yet-discovered continent in the southern hemisphere spread far and wide for hundreds of years, and an explorer for the Dutch East India Company named Abel Tasman is credited with first suspecting its existence.
Tasman joined the Dutch East India Company in 1634, where he began his service patrolling the waters around today’s Indonesia (then known as the Dutch East Indies), looking for rebels and smugglers. A few years later, in 1642, Tasman was sent to lead an expedition to the “still unexplored South - and…
