Tectonic research finds that Earth has six6 continents not seven7
#bitcoin $BTC New research argues Europe and North America may still be linked; Iceland and a proto-microcontinent offer clues.
#MarketRebound $ETH Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy. The work comes from the University of Derby, led by Dr. Jordan Phethean. His team says Europe and North America may not be as cleanly separated as most maps suggest.
The focus is the North Atlantic, where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge marks active stretching. Many textbooks treat that ridge as the scar of a breakup that happened long ago. Phethean’s group argues the separation is not finished. In their framing, the North American and Eurasian plates are still connected in ways that matter.
#TrendingTopic $BNB “The North American and Eurasian tectonic plates have not yet actually broken apart, as is traditionally thought to have happened 52 million years ago,” Dr. Phethean said.
Iceland sits at the center of the debate. The island rises along the ridge, and it has long been tied to the idea of a deep mantle plume. In older explanations, Iceland helped confirm that the plates split, then magma filled the gap. The new study flips that emphasis. It treats Iceland and nearby undersea ridges as clues that fragments from both sides remain stitched into a broader structure.
#MEME #news Phethean and colleagues argue Iceland and the Greenland Iceland Faroes Ridge, often shortened to GIFR, include geological pieces linked to both Europe and North America. They propose a new label for the setting: a “Rifted Oceanic Magmatic Plateau” (ROMP). The point is not that continents are about to merge. The point is that the boundary may be messier than a simple ocean divide.
Phethean describes the discovery as the Earth Science equivalent of finding the Lost City of Atlantis because his team uncovered “fragments of lost continent submerged beneath the sea and kilometers of thin lava flows.”