{"id":5328,"date":"2017-02-08T11:02:37","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T16:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5328"},"modified":"2017-02-08T11:02:37","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T16:02:37","slug":"newly-found-remnants-of-an-ancient-continent-of-mauritia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/newly-found-remnants-of-an-ancient-continent-of-mauritia\/","title":{"rendered":"Newly found remnants of an ancient continent of Mauritia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5329\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5329\" class=\"wp-image-5329\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Mauritius-beach-mountains-scenery-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Typical view of Mauritius beachfront with volcanic mountains, which are over 9 million years old.  (Image by Susan J. Webb, University of the Witwatersrand)\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Mauritius-beach-mountains-scenery-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Mauritius-beach-mountains-scenery-1024x768-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5329\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Typical view of Mauritius beachfront with volcanic mountains, which are over 9 million years old. (Image by Susan J. Webb, University of the Witwatersrand)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Three billion-year-old minerals found under Mauritius suggest that the island was once part of a lost continent. Zircon crystals ranging from two-and-a-half to three billion years of age were found in lava brought up to the surface of Mauritius by volcanic eruptions. These minerals are part of a growing body of evidence that suggests that some ocean-island volcanoes sit on top of continental crust &#8211; not just oceanic crust, as previously thought.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lewis D. Ashwal, Michael Wiedenbeck &amp; Trond H. Torsvik<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corresponding author:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lewis Ashwal, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Email: <a href=\"mailto:Lewis.Ashwal@wits.ac.za\" target=\"_blank\">Lewis.Ashwal@wits.ac.za<\/a>, Tel: <a href=\"tel:+27%2022%20717%206652\" target=\"_blank\">+27 22 717 6652<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/ncomms14086\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper<\/a> published in <em>Nature Communications<\/em> on January 31, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three billion-year-old minerals found under Mauritius suggest that the island was once part of a lost continent. Zircon crystals ranging from two-and-a-half to three billion years of age were found in lava brought up to the surface of Mauritius by volcanic eruptions. These minerals are part of a growing body of evidence that suggests that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1457,2850,2851],"class_list":["post-5328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-geology","tag-tectonics","tag-volcanoes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Mauritius-beach-mountains-scenery-1024x768.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1nW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5330,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328\/revisions\/5330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}