Imagine a typical continent with seemingly endless land in all directions, diverse landscapes with broad valleys and uplands, and wide-open vistas across undulating plains, with upstanding mountain ranges far in the distance. There may be prominent features that command attention and draw the eye, like odd-shaped hills, peaks, pinnacles, mesas and volcanoes. And there may be canyons, valleys, gorges, large depressions and basins. Now imagine this same continent under the sea, and largely drowned. Welcome to Zealandia. Continents are some of Planet Earth's most striking geographic and geological features. To have a continental identity is to be important, significant, recognised. This book makes a compelling claim for Zealandia to take its place alongside Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Antarctica. Zealandia is a continent almost entirely submerged. With New Zealand as its largest inhabited land mass, it stretches north to incorporate New Caledonia, south beyond Auckland and Campbell islands, west beyond Australia's Lord Howe Island and east past the Chathams.
Its ancestry reaches back more than half a billion years - a long, complex and dramatic story of growth, stretching, breakup, submergence, immersion and collision. Equally, the story of its cargo of life - human and otherwise - is one of extinction, adaption and migration. A big book full of big ideas, and brought to you by renowned GNS scientists Hamish Campbell (co-author of In Search of Ancient New Zealand) and Nick Mortimer, Zealandia: Our Continent Revealed is in every respect a landmark publication - thought-provoking, visually stunning and eminently readable.
Author Biography
Nick Mortimer is a geologist with GNS Science. His interests in petrology and tectonics have taken him to all four corners of the submerged continent of Zealandia and to neighbouring Antarctica and Australia. He has participated in a number of scientific voyages plumbing the ocean depths for rock samples and other marine data, and has published extensively on the subject. Nick is the acknowledged expert on the exploration and history of Zealandia. He lives in Dunedin. Dr Hamish Campbell is a geologist with GNS Science and is well-known for his role as 'resident geologist' at the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and as a science communicator. As an author of popular books - including the bestselling In Search of Ancient New Zealand (Penguin, co-authored with Gerard Hutching) - he has raised awareness of Zealandia and its significance. As a palaeontologist, his specialist interests are primarily concerned with fossils and their interpretation in terms of the ancestry and evolution of life on Zealandia. He lives in Wellington.
