A Fully Sunken Continent; The Kerguelen Plateau

Within the northern Antarctic there is a massive almost completely submerged continent which spans nearly a million square miles. This continent once had an island the size of California which only disappeared below sea level 20 million years ago. Known as the Kerguelen Plateau, its formation occurred due to one of Earth's largest outpourings of lava via what are termed a series of flood basalts. Today, it contains the Kerguelen Islands, the Heard Islands, and the McDonald Islands. Thumbnail Photo Credit: Google Earth, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Image Landsat / Copernicus. This image was overlaid with text, and then overlaid with GeologyHub made graphics (the image border & the GeologyHub logo). If you would like to support this channel, consider using one of the following links: (Patreon: http://patreon.com/geologyhub) (YouTube membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYeGh5VML5XPr5jYnzh3J6g/join) (Gemstone & Mineral Etsy store: http://prospectingarizona.etsy.com) (GeologyHub Merch Etsy store: http://geologyhub.etsy.com) Google Earth imagery used in this video: ©Google & Data Providers This video is protected under "fair use". If you see an image and/or video which is your own in this video, and/or think my discussion of a scientific paper (and/or discussion/mentioning of the data/information within a scientific paper) does not fall under the fair use doctrine, and wish for it to be censored or removed, contact me by email at [email protected] and I will make the necessary changes. Various licenses used in sections of this video (not the entire video, this video as a whole does not completely fall under one of these licenses) and/or in this video's thumbnail image (and this list does not include every license used in this video and/or thumbnail image): Public Domain: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode Sources/Citations: [1] Arnaud, Fabien & Sabatier, Pierre & Leloup, Anouk & Servettaz, Aymeric & Moine, Bertrand & Develle, Anne-Lise & Guedron, Stephane & Perrot, Vincent & Pignol, Cecile & Poulenard, Jérôme & Fanget, Bernard & Malet, Emmanuel & Støren, Eivind & Reyss, Jean-Louis & Viavan, Nicolas & Heirman, Katrien & Batist, Marc & Michel, Elisabeth & de Beaulieu, jacques-Louis & Bakke, Jostein. (2020). Holocene tephrochronology of Kerguelen Archipelago, Subantarctic Indian Ocean. 10.31223/osf.io/5jnu6. [2] Huai-Jen Yang, Frederick A. Frey, Dominique Weis, Andre Giret, Doug Pyle, Gilbert Michon, Petrogenesis of the Flood Basalts Forming the Northern Kerguelen Archipelago: Implications for the Kerguelen Plume, Journal of Petrology, Volume 39, Issue 4, April 1998, Pages 711–748, https://doi.org/10.1093/petroj/39.4.711 [3] Coffin, Millard & Pringle, Malcolm & Duncan, R.A. & Gladczenko, T.P. & Storey, M. & Müller, Dietmar & Gahagan, Lisa. (2002). Kerguelen Hotspot Magma Output since 130 Ma. Journal of Petrology. 43. 1121-1139. 10.1093/petrology/43.7.1121. 0:00 A Sunken Island 0:18 Kerguelen Plateau 1:58 130 Million Years Ago 2:53 1st Flood Basalts 3:44 Hotspot Trend 4:09 Last Flood Basalts 4:22 Recent Volcanism 5:08 Disappearing Island