Home›Open Questions›Is Zealandia, the largely submerged landmass in the southwest Pacific, an eighth continent?Open QuestionsIs Zealandia, the largely submerged landmass in the southwest Pacific, an eighth continent?Citation FormatsGeneral ReferenceGeneral Reference Citation TextGeography Atlas. "Is Zealandia, the largely submerged landmass in the southwest Pacific, an eighth continent?." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-geography.interactiveatlas.org/open-questions-index/is-zealandia-an-eighth-continent.Copy General ReferenceAPA StyleAPA Style Citation TextGeography Atlas. (n.d.). Is Zealandia, the largely submerged landmass in the southwest Pacific, an eighth continent?. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-geography.interactiveatlas.org/open-questions-index/is-zealandia-an-eighth-continentCopy APA StyleBibTeXBibTeX Citation Text@misc{geographyatlas-is-zealandia-the-largely-submerged-landm, author = {Geography Atlas}, title = {Is Zealandia, the largely submerged landmass in the southwest Pacific, an eighth continent?}, year = {2026}, url = {https://dev-geography.interactiveatlas.org/open-questions-index/is-zealandia-an-eighth-continent}, note = {Accessed August 30, 2026} }Copy BibTeXOpen QuestionCross-Tradition ConnectionsSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)Open QuestionIn 2017 a team of eleven geologists from New Zealand, New Caledonia and Australia concluded that Zealandia, a roughly 4.9 million square kilometre mass of continental crust of which about 94 percent lies underwater, meets every geological criterion for a continent, a case geologist Nick Mortimer argued would have been settled long ago if the crust were not submerged. The idea was first proposed by Bruce Luyendyk in 1995. It has been described variously as a submerged continent, a continental fragment and a microcontinent, and has not been adopted as a standard eighth continent in the conventional lists this atlas otherwise follows.What would resolve this A shift in the standard continent count that the world's atlases, geography curricula and geological bodies converge on adopting; the underlying geology is not seriously disputed, only whether the classification "continent" is extended to a landmass this submerged.OpenZealandia (Wikipedia)Cross-Tradition ConnectionsQuestion OnAustralia, Continents Well-attested Source Zealandia (Wikipedia)tier 2SourcesZealandia (Wikipedia)tier 2Wikimedia FoundationContinent classification sectionView the SourceComments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.View At A Past YearThe atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.Show This Year