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Photo: news.nationalgeographic.com
2 thousand km from the coast of Africa, south of the island of Madagascar is a favorite place for tourists – the Republic of Mauritius. Scientists believe that the small island on which it is located republic, appeared 9 million years ago from chilled lava after eruptions of an underwater volcano. However, scientists recently discovered on Mauritius island grains of sand containing particles of mineral zircons, which are much older than the island itself – they are up to 2 billion years. In a recent study, scientists concluded that these minerals once belonged to the now defunct land, small particles of which rose up in the era of the formation of the island Mauritius. Researcher-geologist Bjorn Jamtweit with his colleagues at Norwegian University believe that the lost the mini-continent they called Mauritius was four less islands of Madagascar. Moreover, based on the data of the ancient division of the continents, scientists concluded that once Mauritius was a small part of the huge “supercontinent”, parts of which was also India and Madagascar. According to yamwait these three parts of land made up a single huge continent before the formation Indian Ocean. But, like ancient Atlantis, Mauritius drowned, when 85 million years ago, India separated from Madagascar. Scientists have long suspected that volcanic islands could find evidence of the existence of lost continents, and Yamtveit with a team of geologists decided to prove this hypothesis during expeditions to Mauritius in 1999. Mauritius is relatively young island, and zircon could not be on it naturally that is why the expedition to Mauritius was best suited for verification of this theory. As a result, zircon was found on the island, which is 9 million years old, which clearly indicates the presence of sunken continent, explained Yamtveit. However, the geologist of Paris Institute Jerome Diman expressed doubt in the results of the study Norwegian scientists. He believes that ancient zircon could appear on Mauritius in another unnatural way – for example, as ship ballast or modern building material. Diman, who did not participate in the study, stated that “exceptional hypotheses require exceptional evidence, which the study authors do not propose. “Diman added that, if Mauritius really existed once, then evidence of this would be found by deep-sea seismometers near Reunion Islands in the same ocean area. Sergey Translation Vasilenkova
India Islands
