Old Zealand gang
Here’s me hoping the next cataclysm drains the oceans by a few hundred feet so we can establish New Old Zealand 🇳🇿
Hear ye Nozzies!
If submerged land can be called continents, where’s the line between what is and isn’t a continent?
I think the reason Zealandia is called a “submerged continent” is because it is made of continental crust rather than oceanic crust.
But IMO the best geologic definition of continents is by tectonic plates, which mostly matches up with the cultural definitions of the continents.
For the major continents, we have these plates:
- North American
- South American
- Eurasian
- African
- Australian
- Antarctic
There are several smaller plates too, like the Caribbean, Indian, and Arabian plates. IMO, we should consider these independent continents.
There is also a dedicated Pacific plate. The ring of fire is the border of this plate.
New Zealand / Zealandia is on the ring of fire. Half on the Australian plate, half on the Pacific plate. You can actually see the border of the two plates when you look at the topographical map of Zealandia.
Oceanic crust is heavier, denser, and composed of different rocks than continental crust.
It’s just this, just simple geology.
The water level is actually irrelevant.
The OP states it was part of Gondwana, maybe that’s what makes it different.
If you click through to the microcontinent link that seems to support the idea of microcontinents being pieces broken off a bigger one. But with everything coming from Gondwana then that means all the existing ones are fragments, and the only reason other fragments aren’t considered continents is size (e.g. Madigascar).
Zealandia seems to be the Pluto of continents. Too small to be a continent but much larger than the largest microcontinent.
Geographical continents and geological continents aren’t quite the same thing.
That Civilization 6 uses geological continents when the ‘continent’ key word is used where every other game in the series uses geographical continents for that key word still bugs me.
That’s a debate that transcends culture. Some cultures say there are seven, some say six, and yet others say five.
Fault lines? Thats all I got
So NZ is technically a mountaintop. Cool!
All land above water is a mountain top, at a certain scale.
And all continents are islands at a certain scale.
Slightly off topic, but this film can be enjoyed as:
Oh, yes. That’s how I originally saw it.
I originally saw the unriffed version and I still really like it. It sucks that Universal executives made them chop down the movie to shorter than the length of a TV episode (along with all the other stupid changes they forced). It makes it look like a much worse movie than it actually is. Not that it is a bad movie for MST3K, just that it was made unnecessarily much worse than it actually was, which was about what you could expect for “good” 1950s sci-fi.
Mannnnnn, I wanna live on a billion year old, largely submerged continent. Shit looks dope af. And they seemed to kind win at Pandemic. Great share, thanks!
Just give it a few years. The continent you are currently on will be largely submerged soon enough.
Lol 5,000 meter mountains submerged? The ocean is rising a few meters. Its bad for islands and costal cities.
There’s no risk of whole continents getting submerged
80% of the US population is in the East. The high plateus of the US and the rockies are extremely sparsely populated
I said meters.
And I didn’t say feet?
I don’t live in north america
neither do I
With rising sea levels it might end up as No Zealand
All this time we’ve been keeping our true power hidden.
Also, if you mention Zealandia in New Zealand, people will look at you blankly and say “The bird sanctuary?”
Isn’t it called Oceania? Or are they different?
Oceania tends to refer to the region, including both Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, and the many small island nations.
Sometimes, we are “collectivly” treated as a continent, despite being almost all island nations with no land boarders.
Well we don’t call you landiania
Worldbuilding enthusiasts start heavy breathing
Zealandia shall rise again!
*Glomar explores harder*
Try pointing to New Zealand on a map. I dare you
I mean it’s next to Australia, pretty easy to spot ngl
That’s actually Tasmania.
Whoosh, but that’s ok
My favourite map without NZ, was a map that included the southern island but not the northern island. So the country was unrecognisable.
Oohhhh damn it
See. It’s not there
Ok.
*Points at the part with land.*
You sonofa
Map map map men men.
Wait until you hear about Doggerland.
Just wait until you hear about how they discovered Doggerland once had people on it!
(That said, Doggerland wasn’t a continent.)
During the early Holocene, the exposed land area of Doggerland stretched across the region between what is now the east coast of Great Britain, the Netherlands, the western coast of Germany and the Danish peninsula of Jutland.
So, it was a bit bigger.
Btw, UK and europe were all connected, until the big glacial seas from thawing ice broke loose.
The cool thing about Doggerland (to me) is we know it was inhabited by humans.
I believe Atlas Pro did a video on it one time. I’ll go check.
Edit: Yep
wtf it looks like a fat New Zealand. is there an even slimmer version inside NZ?
Excellent!
Any undiscovered cave entrances from the surfaced part?
And we’ll never get it back at the rate we’re going. Come on ice age 2!
