Finding Argoland: how a lost continent resurfaced

Douwe van Hinsbergen during fieldwork in Sabah, Maleisië - Geologists have long known that around 155 million years ago, a 5000 km long piece of continent broke off western Australia and drifted away. They can see that by the 'void' it left behind: a basin hidden deep below the ocean known as the Argo Abyssal Plain. The underwater feature also lends its name to the newly formed continent: Argoland. The structure of the seafloor shows that this continent must have drifted off to the northwest, and must have ended up where the islands of Southeast Asia are located today. But surprisingly, there is no large continent hidden beneath those islands, only the remnants of small continental fragments that are also surrounded by much older oceanic basins. So what happened to Argoland? Geologists at Utrecht University have now managed to reconstruct the history of the lost continent. As it turns out, Argoland is in fragments, but is still there.