{"id":125471,"date":"2021-07-24T11:23:01","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T18:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/chunk-of-an-ancient-supercontinent-discovered-under-new-zealand"},"modified":"2021-07-24T11:23:01","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T18:23:01","slug":"chunk-of-an-ancient-supercontinent-discovered-under-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/chunk-of-an-ancient-supercontinent-discovered-under-new-zealand","title":{"rendered":"Chunk of an ancient supercontinent discovered under New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/chunk-of-an-ancient-supercontinent-discovered-under-new-zealand2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cContinents are sort of like icebergs,\u201d says study author Keith Klepeis, a structural geologist at the University of Vermont. \u201cWhat you see at the surface is not really the full extent of the beast.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The discovery, <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.geoscienceworld.org\/gsa\/geology\/article\/doi\/10.1130\/G48711.1\/598229\/A-hidden-Rodinian-lithospheric-keel-beneath\" target=\"_blank\">described in the journal <i>Geology<\/i><\/a>, may help solve a riddle that\u2019s long perplexed scientists. Most continents contain a core of rock known as a craton, a sort of geologic nucleus at least a billion years old that acts like a stable base upon which continents build. Until now, though, the oldest continental crust found on Zealandia was dated to roughly 500 million years ago\u2014relatively youthful in geologic terms. So if Zealandia is a continent, why did its craton seem to be missing?<\/p>\n<p>This newfound fragment of ancient rock may be part of the missing piece for Zealandia. The discovery \u201cticks the final box,\u201d Turnbull says. \u201cWe are sitting on a continent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cContinents are sort of like icebergs,\u201d says study author Keith Klepeis, a structural geologist at the University of Vermont. \u201cWhat you see at the surface is not really the full extent of the beast.\u201d The discovery, described in the journal Geology, may help solve a riddle that\u2019s long perplexed scientists. Most continents contain a core [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}