North America and Europe should be classified as one continent: controversial study

A controversial new study suggests our geography textbooks need to be rewritten.

Since we were young, we’ve been taught that Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America make up the seven continents, but a study published in the journal Gondwana Research makes the claim that only six actually exist. .

Researchers from the University of Derby looked at the separation of Europe and North America over time and the geological process behind it, and they found that the separation is still ongoing.

Dr. Jordan Phethean, lead author of the study, explained to Earth.com that “the tectonic plates of North America and Eurasia have not yet pulled apart, as is traditionally thought to have happened 52 million years ago.”

He said these tectonic plates “are, in fact, still stretching and in the process of splitting apart” and are not yet separate entities.

Therefore, the paper’s authors argued, North America and Europe could be seen as a single continent rather than two separate ones.

Iceland was the focus of the study as the volcanic island is thought to have formed about 60 million years ago due to the mid-Atlantic ridge. The paper noted that this particular tectonic boundary – formed by the North American and Eurasian plates – has long been thought to have created the island with the emergence of a hot mantle plume.

But now, researchers are postulating that Iceland and the Greenland Faroe Ridge (GIFR) have geological fragments from the European and North American tectonic plates, suggesting that they are connected rather than isolated parts.

To describe this phenomenon, scientists coined the term Rifted Oceanic Magmatic Plateau (ROMP).

If their findings prove to be true, it would mean that the tectonic plates of the European and North American continents are still in the process of separating, leaving the world with six continents instead of seven.

Phethean knows the study will be controversial, but he sticks to the research.

“It is controversial to suggest that the GIFR contains a large amount of continental crust within it and that the European and North American tectonic plates may not yet have formally separated,” he admitted.

However, the research is still in the conceptual stage, and the research team hopes to conduct more tests on Iceland’s volcanic rocks to obtain more concrete evidence of an ancient continental crust.