A study conducted by a geologist from University of Oslo, Bjørn Jamtveit, and his colleagues suggests that a micro continent may lie between Madagascar and India. The evidence of the long lost land comes from sand extracted from the Mauritian coast.

The sand collected from the two sites of the coast showed about 20 zircons – crystals of zirconium silicate that are resistant to erosion or chemical change –  that were far older than the 8,9 million year old basalt of the island.

Jamtveit said:

The zircons had crystallized within granites or other igneous rocks at least 660 million years ago. One of these zircons was at least 1.97 billion years old.

Jamtviet suggests, “zircons originated in ancient fragments of continental crust located beneath Mauritius.” The team says a recent volcanic eruption brought these pieces of the earth’s crust to the surface, “where the zircons eroded from their parent rocks to pepper the island’s sands.”

The report was published in Nature Geoscience and states the continental crust lies beneath the floor of the Indian Ocean. An analysis of the Earth’s gravitational field shows that the earth’s crust is 25-30 kilometers thicker than the usual 5-10 kilometer thickness in that area. The thicker crusts may be Mauritia, the ghost continent named by the team. Mauritia reportedly broke off from Madagascar when “tectonic rifting and sea-floor spreading sent the Indian subcontinent surging northeast millions of years ago.”

[Source: Nature]