Zealandia: a continent beneath the sea

Exploration · Cretaceous

Zealandia: a continent beneath the sea

Starting point · 100 Ma

Conceptual section of Zealandia’s continental crust; not to scale or a reconstruction of a particular site.

Zealandia is a region of continental crust covering about 4.9 million km², roughly 94% underwater. Its crust stretched and thinned during separation from Gondwana; subsidence and later plate movements shaped it. The map provides an overview of Earth through time from a fixed view. It does not follow fossil localities or individual fragments of continental crust.