[Rockhounds] Earth has six continents not seven, radical new study claims

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Forget what you learnt in elementary school geography, Earth
<https://www.indy100.com/topic/earth> apparently doesn’t have seven
continents <https://www.indy100.com/topic/continent> after all.

>From a young age, we’re taught that the world is made up of Africa,
Antarctica, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America, and
yet, new research suggests that this isn’t, in fact, the case.

A new study, published in the journal *Gondwana Research
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X24001023?via%3Dihub>*,
posits that we actually only have six continents.

This extraordinary claim is the result of detailed research into the
geological processes behind the breakup of Europe and North America, and
into how these landmasses have evolved over time.

The paper’s lead author Dr Jordan Phethean, of the University of Derby,
explained to *Earth.com
<https://www.earth.com/news/claim-earth-has-six-continents-not-seven-north-america-europe-connected/>*that
his team’s findings indicate that “the North America and Eurasian tectonic
plates have not yet actually broken apart, as is traditionally thought to
have happened 52 million years ago.”

Instead, he said, these plates are continuing to stretch and so are still
in the process of breaking apart, rather than being wholly separate
entities.

In other words, North America and Europe could be considered a single
continent, rather than two distinct ones.

https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/earth-number-of-contients-2668936579