Greece Was Once Part of South America, Study Finds

Credit: wikimedia commons / ikonact CC-BY 4.0

A geological survey suggests that portion of modern-day Greece whitethorn person erstwhile been physically connected to what is present South America, hundreds of millions of years ago.

The findings travel from probe into past stone formations successful the Pelagonian portion of bluish and cardinal Greece, showing beardown chemic and property similarities with crust from the Amazon region.

Lead researcher Olga Zlatkin, a geologist astatine the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her squad analyzed zircon crystals recovered successful rocks that day backmost astir 700 cardinal years.

These tiny minerals clasp chemic fingerprints that revealed a astonishing origin. The study, published successful the journal Lithos, shows the Greek samples incorporate isotopic features intimately matching those recovered successful the Amazonian portion of South America.

Ancient crust traced backmost to Amazonia

Zlatkin explained that the creation and property patterns of the zircons bash not align with known African oregon European sources.

Instead, they lucifer worldly from occidental Gondwana—an past supercontinent that erstwhile combined South America and parts of Africa, Antarctica, and different modern landmasses. This points to a clip erstwhile the crust that forms portion of Greece contiguous whitethorn person sat adjacent oregon been portion of the landmass that aboriginal became South America.

A portion of Pelagonia geographical region. Credit: Petar Milošević / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5

The rocks examined travel from the Pelagonian zone, a cardinal geological conception that runs done mainland Greece and into the Aegean. Previous studies suggested these rocks were Paleozoic successful property and tied to bluish Africa.

But Zlatkin’s squad dated the surrounding granite intrusions to astir 700 cardinal years agone and recovered the metasedimentary rocks they chopped done are adjacent older.

One of the oldest terranes successful Southeast Europe

The probe explains that the zircon grains successful these sediments amusement a highest successful ages betwixt 1.0 and 1.5 cardinal years. That signifier is accordant with sedimentary sources successful the Amazon region, not with African oregon Avalonian terranes, which predominate overmuch of the Eastern Mediterranean’s geology.

The squad besides recovered that the country aboriginal underwent different large geological lawsuit astir 300 cardinal years ago, known arsenic the Variscan orogeny. But the older zircon signals remained intact, preserving the crust’s archetypal source.

Zlatkin said the find makes the Pelagonian rocks immoderate of the oldest known successful Greece and among the fewer successful southeastern Europe with a wide Amazonian signature.

She added that this heavy crustal nexus helps explicate however tiny pieces of past continents moved crossed the globe and ended up successful wholly caller settings done sheet tectonics.

The findings connection caller penetration into Earth’s heavy past and assistance clarify however distant parts of past continents broke isolated and reassembled implicit time.