Long-lost part of Earth discovered in Borneo

Experts in Borneo have found ancient remains of a lost part of the Earth that was believed to be 120 million years old.

Experts continue to make new discoveries about our planet, from finding continents that have been missing for hundreds of years to discovering vast oceans hidden beneath the Earth's crust.

Now, a stunning new discovery has revealed details of the 120-million-year-old tectonic plate, now called Pontus.

The existence of the crust was predicted when Susanna van de Laegemaat, a geology graduate student at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and her supervisor Douwe van Hinsbergen, analyzed geological data from mountains in the Asia-Pacific region.

While studying rock formations in northern Borneo, van de Lagemaat found some clear signs of the ancient Pontus Plate. “We thought we were dealing with the remains of a lost plate that we already knew about,” he explained.

“But our laboratory magnetic studies on these rocks indicated that what we found was originally from further north, and must be the remains of a different, previously unknown plate,” she continued.

Researchers estimate that the Pontus Plate, which formed part of the world's crust before the supercontinent Pangaea broke up, was about a quarter the size of the Pacific Ocean, based on reconstructions of what it looked like 160 million years ago.

The continent of Pontus lay beneath the vast ocean that separated Eurasia and Australia at the time. As Pangea broke apart, it is believed that the plate was swallowed up by other plates that carried countries such as the Philippines and Borneo to their current locations.

Van de Lagemat research This study focuses on a complex area of ​​plate tectonic activity known as the Transcontinental Zone, which extends from Japan, Borneo, the Philippines, New Guinea and all the way to New Zealand.

Through her research, she was able to use the data to create a video that reconstructs the movements of tectonic plates that have occurred from the age of the dinosaurs to the present day.

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