Modern Arctic is the third version of the Arctic continent that exited on planet Earth, specialists at the Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Novosibirsk State University said, Pravda.Ru reports with reference to TASS.
The scientists believe that the territory of modern-day Arctic used to be the continent of Arctida. Arctida, the scientists believe, had formed and broken up twice, although it was previously believed that it had happened only once.
The head of the department for general and regional geology of the Novosibirsk State University, Dmitry Metelkin, said that the first version of the Arctic continent, Arctida I, was formed a billion years ago. About 750 million years ago, Arctida I broke into separate fragments. After another 500 million years, when the supercontinent of Pangea was formed, the constituent elements of Arctida became connected again, but their structure was different.
Afterwards, the continent broke up into fragments again creating archipelagos of Severnaya Zemlya, Svalbard, New Siberian Islands, a part of the Taimyr Peninsula, northern tips of Alaska and Chukotka, islands near Greenland and the Kara Sea shelf.
The scientists concluded the above having analyzed the characteristics of the ancient magnetic field of the Earth. Such data can be obtained from rocks at the time of their formation. It took the scientists 20 years to collect the paleomagnetic data in missions to the islands of the Arctic Ocean.
The results of the extensive research were published in Precambrian Research the international journal.
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