Dixit reported in mid-November 2023 that Argoland was once part of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana. Prior to the current scattered arrangement of continents, there existed supercontinents. The change began with the forces of plate tectonics, leading to the irregular break-up of these immense land masses millions of years ago, resulting in the separation of continents.
Gondwana was an ancient supercontinent that included South America, Africa, India, Antarctica, and Australia. The disintegration of Gondwana led to the development of the modern continents we know today. While many other landmasses linked with Gondwana were reasonably easy to locate, the one called Argoland has proven to be exceptionally difficult. Argoland split away from Australia and drifted apart 150 million years ago. But now, a recent study from Utrecht University claims that the fragmented remains of this continent have been located in Southeast Asia.
The missing fragments of the lost continent
The team set out to piece together the history of the vanished continent, spending seven years doing so. In the quest to locate the lost continent of Argoland, researchers used geological data gathered from the deep ocean basin known as Argo Abyssal Plain, located off the western coast of Australia, As per the official release, the separation from Australia left a visible "void" in this undersea basin named after Argoland.
“The structure of the seafloor shows that this continent must have drifted off to the northwest, and must have ended up where the islands of Southeast Asia are located today,” mentioned the release.
"The situation in Southeast Asia is very different from places like Africa and South America, where a continent broke neatly into two pieces. Argoland splintered into many different shards. That obstructed our view of the continent's journey," said Eldert Advokaat, one of the authors.
Argoland, it turns out, still exists in fragments. Beneath the lush jungles that cover large portions of Indonesia and Myanmar lies the “hidden” presence of Argoland. It likely began as an "argopelago," made up of microcontinental pieces separated by pre-existing oceanic basins. Argoland's fragmentation accelerated around 215 million years ago, hastening the continent's disintegration into thin, shattered parts.
The results were reported in the journal Gondwana Research.
Study abstract:
Based on the marine magnetic anomalies identified in the Argo Abyssal Plain offshore northwestern Australia, the conceptual continent of Argoland must have rifted off in the Late Jurassic (∼155 Ma) and drifted northward towards SE Asia. Intriguingly, in SE Asia there are no intact relics of a major continent such as India, but instead the region displays an intensely deformed, long-lived accretionary orogen that formed during more than 100 million years of oceanic and continental subduction.
Within this orogen, continental fragments may represent parts of Argoland. After accretion of these fragments, the orogen was further deformed. The geologists compiled the orogenic architecture, the history of post-accretionary deformation of SE Asia, and the architecture and history of the NW Australian passive margin. They identified the Gondwana-derived blocks and mega-units of SW Borneo, Greater Paternoster, East Java, South Sulawesi, West Burma, and Mount Victoria Land as fragments that collectively may represent fragments of Argoland.
These fragments are found between sutures with relics of Late Triassic to Middle Jurassic oceanic basins that all pre-date the break-up of Argoland. The geologists systematically restored deformation within SE Asia in the upper plate system above the modern Sunda trench, used this to estimate where Gondwana-derived continental fragments accreted at the Sundaland (Eurasian) margin in the Cretaceous (∼110–85 Ma), and subsequently reconstructed their tectonic transport back to the Australian-Greater Indian margin.
Their reconstruction showed that Argoland originated at the northern Australian margin between the Bird’s Head in the east and Wallaby-Zenith Fracture Zone in the west, south of which it bordered Greater India. They showed that the lithospheric fragment that broke off northwest Australia in the Late Jurassic consisted of multiple continental fragments and intervening Triassic to Middle Jurassic oceanic basins, which they called Argopelago. Argoland broke up into Argopelago during the Late Triassic rifting of Lhasa from the northern margin of Gondwana, and consisted of multiple continental fragments that were surrounded by oceanic basins, similar to Zealandia offshore modern east Australia, and the reconstructed history of Greater Adria in the Mediterranean.
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