Recently Discovered the Long-Lost Microcontinent - The Ninth Continent?

Since ancient times, China has had theories of the "Small Nine Provinces" and the "Great Nine Provinces," which is a geographical theory advocated by Zou Yan, a person from Qi during the Warring States period. It refers to the continents outside of China. The Records of the Grand Historian: Biographies of Mencius and Xunzi states: "Zou Yan believed that what Confucians call China occupies only one part out of eighty-one parts of the world. China is named Chixian Shenzhou. Within Chixian Shenzhou, there are naturally nine provinces, which are the nine provinces ordered by Yu, and they cannot be counted as separate provinces. Outside of China, there are nine regions like Chixian Shenzhou, which are what is called the Nine Provinces. Thus, there is a small sea surrounding them, where people and animals cannot pass through; if it is like a single region, it is considered one province. There are nine such regions, and then there is a great ocean surrounding them, at the boundary of heaven and earth.

Currently, it is known that there are seven continents in the world, and there is a suspected sunken one, the continent of Atlantis. Adding this one, there are still only eight continents, which does not conform to the description of the Great Nine Provinces in ancient texts.

However, according to foreign media reports, scientists have recently discovered evidence of a long-lost microcontinent along the coast of the Indian Ocean in Africa. In Mauritius, located 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa, the sand grains discovered by scientists show that the materials they contain are older than the island itself.

Scientists believe that about 9 million years ago, Mauritius was formed by the cooling of magma erupted from underwater volcanoes. Now, the sand grains discovered by researchers contain zircons that are approximately 660 million to 2 billion years old. Therefore, they believe that these relatively ancient materials once belonged to a long-lost continent, and these zircons floated to the surface during the formation of Mauritius.

Geologist Jamtveit from the University of Oslo said: "Magma moves downward from the continental material to the surface, and it also brings up some rocks containing zircons."

Most rocks are thought to decompose under the high temperatures of magma, but some of them eventually formed rocks on the surface of Mauritius.

The microcontinent now discovered is called Mauritia, and it is expected to be only one-quarter the size of Madagascar. Scientists infer that this microcontinent once belonged to a larger supercontinent named Rodinia, which was composed of India and Madagascar. About 85 million years ago, as India and Madagascar separated, the supercontinent Rodinia was ultimately submerged.

Jamtveit's team promises to use more rigorous methods to discover lost continents in the future. They stated: "Scientists are further drilling to conduct in-depth identification work and obtain high-quality seismic refraction data, while also utilizing geochemistry, geochronology, and plate reconstruction knowledge.""