Researchers from a European university have announced the discovery of Argoland, a historic landmass estimated to be about 5,000 kilometers wide and dating back more than 155 million years. The findings appear in the scientific journal Gondwana Survey.
New analyses show that fragments of Argoland are scattered across the Indian Ocean, with some remnants extending toward Southeast Asia.
Argoland is believed to have separated from Australia near the end of the Jurassic period, a time when brachiosaurs and stegosaurs roamed Earth. Over thousands of years it gradually drifted toward Southeast Asia and eventually vanished beneath the waves. The evidence for the continent lies in the Argo Abyssal Plain, though direct exploration of the landmass has only recently become possible.
Locating Argoland was a long undertaking. The research team spent seven years assembling a global puzzle, combining marine geology, paleogeography, and sedimentary records to reveal the coastline and core structure of the vanished continent.
Parts of Argoland are believed to lie hidden beneath dense forests across broad regions of Indonesia and Myanmar, where the terrain remains largely unexplored.
By studying the ruins and offshore traces, geologists were able to map the progressive disintegration of Argoland. The researchers concluded that at the end of the Triassic period the landmass broke into an archipelago, which was subsequently absorbed by the ocean.
According to the findings, Argoland seems to have split into a series of islands during the Late Triassic, with portions eventually sinking below sea level. Similar patterns have been observed in other extinct continents, including Zealandia, which subsided near Australia, and Greater Adria, once located in the Mediterranean region.
Earlier work noted enormous basins of water forming in what is now New Zealand’s vicinity, a clue that prompted this broader reconstruction of ancient geography.