A research team from the University of South Africa, led by professor Lewis Ashwal has discovered a new continent! The team, which published their findings in a scientific paper in the journal of Nature Communications, discovered pieces of a lost continent they called “Mauritia” in the Indian Ocean under the island of Mauritius. According to the report, the piece of crust is left over from the breakup of Gondwanaland, a super-continent that existed more than 200 million years ago. Containing rocks up to 3.6 billion years old, Gondawanaland split into what now are Africa, South America, Antarctica, India and Australia. The team made the discovery by analyzing a mineral — zircon — found in rocks spewed up by lava during volcanic eruptions. They said that remnants of the mineral were way too old to belong to Mauritius. “Mauritius is an island, and there is no rock older than 9 million years old on the island,” says Ashwal. But by studying rocks on the island, they found zircons that were 3 billion years old.

source: cnn.com