A new report says that a sunken continent may exist under the North Atlantic Ocean. If proven, the continent being called "Icelandia," would throw long-standing assumptions about the region out the window, and it could spark the search for other submerged continents around the globe, Vice reported.
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The idea comes from researchers led by Gillian Fougler, emeritus professor of geophysics at Durham University. In the forthcoming book "In the Footsteps of Warren B. Hamilton: New Ideas in Earth Science," the idea was proposed.
The continent is estimated by Fougler and other researchers to extend for at least 230,000 square miles. If accurate, it would reach Greenland to the north and potentially Europe to the east. Iceland would be the uppermost tip of the hidden mass.
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While the thought of a mysterious continent is intriguing, Fougler and her colleagues emphasized that Icelandia remains a hypothesis that still needs to be confirmed. The methods needed to confirm the theory include deep drilling, geophysical surveys, and analysis of minerals such as zircon.
"The existence of Icelandia needs to be tested," Foulger and her colleagues said in the chapter. They went on to add that Icelandia is "a convenient example" of the possibility for new hypotheses that" could be applied to other candidate sunken continents that are common in the oceans."
Scientists have thought for a long time that a mass of oceanic crust surrounded Iceland. The oceanic crust is denser than continental crust, causing it to sink below continental masses but remain above the Earth's mantle. This leads to oceanic crust being younger and thinner than continental crust, with it being caught in the cycle of subducting into the mantle and being recycled.
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Fougler and her colleagues began suspecting that Iceland the crust surrounding Iceland was continental instead of oceanic. The layer under the island is close to 25 miles in-depth and much thicker than the average four-mile thickness of oceanic crust.
A study from 1977 noted that Iceland might be situated on continental crust, but now it is easier for the theory to be tested than it was five decades ago.
The number of techniques discussed in the chapter could help resolve whether the sunken continent of Icelandia exists or not. This includes searching for zircon crystals, a hard mineral that services billions of years of erosion within the Earth's crust in Iceland.
Dating these crystals could shed light on the age of Iceland's underlying crust, which will then help identify whether it is oceanic or continental crust.
Conducting seismic profiles or drilling cores miles deep into the crust are being suggested by Foulger and her colleagues. The reasoning against these methods is their cost, but still, they could prove or disprove the existence of Icelandia.
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"Icelandia is the best and most easily studied of all postulated submerged continents because of the proximity of large landmasses and the exposure of 35 percent of its area above sea level in the island of Iceland," the team said in the chapter.
This could affect the way that we view the globe and how it is made up.
"There is fantastic work to be done to prove the existence of Icelandia, but it also opens up a completely new view of our geological understanding of the world. Something similar could be happening at many more places," said Foulger in a statement.
"We could eventually see maps of our oceans and seas being redrawn as our understanding of what lies beneath changes."
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