Are there 8 continents

You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Nov 11, , am EST. Nov 10, , pm EST. Nov 9, , pm EST. Nov 9, , am EST. Though it's not possible to collect fossils from the seafloor of Zealandia directly, scientists have been plumbing its depths by drilling. In , a team undertook the most extensive surveys of the region so far, and drilled more than 4,ft 1,m into the seabed at six different sites. The cores that they collected contained pollen from land plants, as well as spores and the shells of organisms that lived in warm, shallow seas.

One of these is Alpine Fault, a plate boundary that runs along the South Island and is so significant, it can be seen from space. The red band of rock — the Median Batholith — should travel all the way down Zealandia in a diagonal line, but instead it has been twisted out of shape Credit: GNS Science. The second is that the geology of New Zealand — as well as that of the wider continent — is oddly bent. Both are split in two by a horizontal line, which is where the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates meet.

At this exact point, it looks like someone has taken the lower half and twisted it away, so that not only do the previously-continuous ribbons of rock no longer line up, but they are almost at right angles.

An easy explanation for this is that the tectonic plates moved, and somehow deformed them out of shape. But exactly how or when this happened is still totally unresolved. Sutherland explains that the continent is unlikely to give up all its secrets anytime soon. So, it just takes a lot of time, money and effort to go out and ships and survey regions. If nothing else, the world's eighth continent surely shows that — nearly years after Tasman's quest — there is still plenty to be discovered.

Twitter: ZariaGorvett. Join one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. The Lost Index Geology. The missing continent it took years to find. Share using Email. By Zaria Gorvett. It took scientists years to discover the eighth continent of the world, which has been hiding in plain sight all along.

But mysteries still remain. Little did Tasman know, he was right all along. There was a missing continent. A laborious discovery In fact, Zealandia has always been difficult to study.

You might also like: The mystery of the lost Roman herb How mathematics emerged from a lost Islamic library The forgotten foods that could excite our tastebuds Still, the mission stalled — discovering a continent is tricky and expensive, and Mortimer points out that there was no urgency. We'd really appreciate it. Click the AdBlock button on your browser and select Don't run on pages on this domain. Zealandia, the new continent, depicted in gray. Mortimer et al. How Do I Whitelist Observer? Below are steps you can take in order to whitelist Observer.

North America includes 23 countries and dozens of possessions and territories. Made up of permanent glaciers, Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, nearly double the size of Australia. Europe is the second smallest continent in the world, but that might change with the inclusion of Zealandia in the revised list of continents.

Ukraine is the largest country in Europe after the Soviet Union broke up into many fragments. Ukraine is followed by France, Spain and Sweden. Europe takes 6.