Part of Africa was part of the Roman Empire. The origins of the names for the continents.įrom Latin "continere" for "to hold together," terra continens, the "continuousĪ Roman term Africa terra "African land," the land of Africus, the northern Still, one could say they belong to a continent, e.g., Oceania is sometimes associated with the continent of Australia. These six continents are then Africa, Antarctica, Australia/Oceania, Eurasia,Īctually, by the definition of a continent as a large continuous area of land, the South Pacific Islands of Oceania aren't a continent. Many geographersĪnd scientists now refer to six continents, in which Europe and Asia are combined These six continents are Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania,īy most standards, there is a maximum of seven continents - Africa, Antarctica,Īsia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America. Many students are taught about six continents, in which North and South America is ![]() However, there is no standard definition for the number of continents. We have been taught in school (way back in the '60s in Europe) that there areįive continents, Africa, America, Asia, Australia, and Europe, for instance symbolized How many Continents are there in the world? (Further readings: Researchers confirm the existence of a 'lost continent' under Mauritius) It is presumed that Mauritia was a small continental fragment, wedged between Madagascar and India that broke away as India and Madagascar separated from Gondwana 85 million years ago.įor all searching for speculative evidence, it might even be the lost continent of 'Kumari Kandam.' Many of its islands are composed of granite rock, which is widely distributed throughout the continental crust. At the northern end of the plateau sits the archipelago of the Seychelles. If you look at a map of the ocean floor in that region, you will see that Mauritius lies at the southern end of the Mascarene Plateau, which looks much like a continental shelf, but without a continent. But findings of ancient zircons on the island about 3,000 million years old, far too old to belong to the island, suggest that under Mauritius lies a 'lost' continent. The island of Mauritius is geologically relatively young, created by volcanic activity some 8 million years ago. In contrast to today's distribution of continents, the larger portion of Pangaea was in the southern hemisphere. Pangaea was a cluster of most or all of Earth's continental blocks combined in one mammoth continent, surrounded by an ocean that occupied almost 70% of Earth's surface. Imagine, recently, about 300 million years ago, during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras, the world was separated - again, in Land (Pangaea) and Water (Panthalassa). It is assumed that supercontinents have arranged and broken apart multiple times in Earth's geologic past. The various tectonic plates may move apart at oceanic ridges, collide at subduction zones, or slide past one another along fault lines. Theory 2: plumes, jets of partially molten rock material, rising to the Earth's surface at the ocean floor between mid-ocean ridges, adding matter to the crust, and pushing the plates in opposite directions. Theory 1: large scale convection currents in the mantle, the heating and cooling of mantle matter, develop enough power to move the plates. The driving forces behind the process of continents to move around across the Earth's surface is not yet fully understood. ![]() The various plates of the lithosphere are moving with a speed of 3 to 20 cm (1 to 8 inches) per year relative to each other. The formation of continents takes time, a long time it takes millions of years.
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