Science Education News (SEN) Journal 2017 Volume 66 Number 4 December 2017 | Page 28

ARTICLES
Explorers probe Hidden Continent of Zealandia (continued)
A rainbow ahead over the prow of the Joides Resolution as it
begins its mission
ODP research vessel Joides Resolution leaving Townsville in
July at the start of its voyage to Zealandia. Mar
It appeared back then that Zealandia separated from Australia
and Antarctica about 80 million years ago, when dinosaurs
roamed the Earth. It then subsided deep beneath the waves and
was lost.
Undersea exploration
Explorers are normal people doing extraordinary things.
Exploration isn’t easy. Not everything goes to plan. The hours
are long, you share a small room with someone you didn’t know
before the voyage, and you miss your family and friends.
However, fossils and volcanic rocks show that northern Zealandia,
an area about the size of India, was radically affected by formation
of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Our preliminary observations suggest that regions now under
more than 1000 metres of water became land or shallow seas,
and other regions that are now under 3000 metres of water may
have been much shallower, or even land. Changes in geography
were massive, and may help explain how the unique plants
and animals of the southwest Pacific were able to disperse and
evolve.
To collect sediment cores from deep beneath the seabed we
need a drill that may be more than 5000 metres long and weigh
more than 200 tonnes. Tim Fulton
Sea sickness is not your friend if you spend 14 hours a day
looking down a microscope at fossils that are so small you could
fit hundreds on the head of a pin. So why do we do it?
It is h