this is the formation of the earth in a
nutshell when things got going about 4.6
billion years ago the earth was a huge
ball of burning gases some of those
gases moved around in space but as time
went on the earth cooled down and the
big ball was held together by gravity
hundreds of millions of years later and
land started to form but the continents
as we know them today didn't start out
like this there was a super chunk of a
continent we call Pangaea about 200
million years ago that broke into two
and we got two continents known as
Gondwana and Laurasia they also split
and voila our current set up it's
actually a bit more complicated as to
how we got to what we see today
regarding the continents and for many
years scientists have pondered over the
question of how things split up as you
will see today those scientists are
still learning and writing about new
discoveries one such discovery was
discussed in a recent paper the title of
that paper is orogenic architecture of
the mediterranean region and kinematic
reconstruction of its tectonic evolution
since the Triassic where you're guessing
that sounds pretty complicated for most
of our viewer so we'll try to explain
the paper in layman's terms basically a
bunch of scientists working at the
universities of attract Oslo and Zurich
claimed that they found parts of an
ancient continent hidden under the
Mediterranean they're calling this
continent Adria the researchers spent
many years trying to figure out how this
area of the Mediterranean formed over a
period of 240 million years this was no
easy task of course and to do it they
had to study the formation of a very
complex region one of the leading
scientists went as far to say that this
area in geological terms was simply a
mess saying that other areas of the
world such as the Himalayan mountain
range are actually pretty easy to study
in that paper the scientists wrote the
region has been the cradle for the
development of geo dynamic concepts that
linked crustal evolution to continental
breakup Oceanic and continental
subduction and mental dynamics in
general again that's probably difficult
to understand so how did they do it well
they studied something called
paleomagnetic sites and they looked at a
massive 2,300 of them hmm but what is a
paleomagnetic site you might be
wondering the answer to that is that
they are sites where researchers look at
the magnetite
in rocks the magnetic properties in the
rocks help researchers to understand
when they were formed in short if you
study a bunch of these sites you should
get some idea as to how an area form as
one scientific paper put it by
determining the magnetic intensity and
orientation of multiple rock outcrops in
an area much can be learned about
formation history land movement and
geologic structure of the area so if you
spent many years going over 2,300 sites
you should get some idea as to how an
entire area was formed over many many
years now back to our newly discovered
continent you remember that we talked
about the supercontinent known as
Gondwana
well bits split off of that giant hunk
of rock and one of those bits the
researchers now called Greater Adria it
was about the size of today's Greenland
most of this place was covered in water
with the scientists saying that there
were tropical seas with sediments in the
form of coral reefs they said some of
these sediments can be found today in
the countries of Greece and Turkey but
also in mountain belts such as the
Apennines and the Alps the thing is
around 100 million years ago most of
this continent was destroyed and it's
sank into the Earth's mantle if you
don't know what the earth looks like on
the inside let's just imagine a layered
gumball with the different flavors at
each layer we live on the top so
generally you don't think about the
stuff we're standing on the top layer we
call the crust so if you want to switch
the gumball analogy to a sandwich
analogy that'll work too the crust could
be anywhere between 3.1 to forty 6.6
miles in thickness that's 5 to 75
kilometers the Earth's crust is mostly
made up of oxygen iron calcium silicon
aluminum sodium magnesium and potassium
below the crust we have the upper mantle
the mantle is made up of mostly oxygen
silicon iron magnesium aluminum and some
other minerals the mantle is massive and
it makes up much of what we call the
earth it's where the volcanic and
seismic activity happens and is said to
have an average thickness of 1793 miles
so we have the crust and the upper and
lower mantle and we have an outer core
and an inner core the core is made up of
mostly iron and nickel but you might
also find some gold platinum and uranium
it's pretty hot in the inner core too
with the temperature being a sizzling
5,400 30 degrees Celsius
or 9800 six degrees Fahrenheit how do we
know all this if we've only drilled
seven point six seven miles down well
it's a theory based on the art of
scientific deduction it might be six
thousand kilometers down to the middle
of the earth but by observing what we
can see we can deduce what lies below
back to Adria around 100 million years
ago the continent was lost but it left
some parts behind as a kind of souvenir
and these souvenirs helped create what
we now see as Mountains mountains are
formed by something called seduction
which is when one plate is plunged under
another plate what happened is that
Greater Adria hit what's now southern
Europe and after that two tectonic
plates crashed and most of that
continent was plunged into the Earth's
mantle bits of it were left on top and
we can find them in the mountains the
leading scientists said this about their
discovery or deposits and building
materials that are vital to our society
are found in mountain belts such as
those in the area investigated the
geological systems in which these
resources form are fragmented together
with the mountain belts that we
reconstructed the reconstruction is
therefore useful in the search for new
resources he is basically saying now
they know better what lies there and
underneath parts of Europe is in fact a
lost continent he also said that the
researchers now have a clearer
understanding of how the earth will look
in the future but don't worry things
aren't going to suddenly change during
your lifetime there are theories about
the continents moving and forming
another supercontinent but we are
talking in millions of years
does this fascinate you as much as it
does us tell us in the comments also be
sure to check out our other video the
evidence that the lost city of Atlantis
existed thanks for watching and as
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