Think your breakup was hard? Imagine things resurfacing twenty million years later…
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science saying…
It can be that way… for land masses!
Geoscientist Attila Balazs and team at ETH Zurich noticed something peculiar. OLDER continental fragments were found among YOUNGER masses of land.
How did these slivers of land get there?
Apparently, when continents break up, there isn’t a clean split. Using 3-D modeling and seafloor observations, researchers were able to track the excess baggage.
Continent fragments get carried away by the ocean into cracks along the seafloor. They can end up hundreds of miles away from their source.
But good luck getting THEIR records back! (Rock of the 80’s…)
Reference: Balázs, A., Gerya, T. & Tari, G. Presence of continental slivers in oceanic transform faults determined by rift inheritance. Nat. Geosci. 18, 1303–1310 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01795-0