Some geologists and scientists have been collating data for almost two decades to prove the world isn't just made up of seven continents, but there's an eight continent called Zealandia.
Researchers have said that New Zealand sits on massive land that can be considered as another continent. The submerged landmass is more than 1 million sq km and deserves to be called a new continent.
"The name Zealandia was first proposed by Luyendyk (1995) as a collective name for New Zealand, the Chatham Rise, Campbell Plateau, and Lord Howe Rise (Fig. 2). Implicit in Luyendyk’s paper was that this was a large region of continental crust, although this was only mentioned in passing and he did not characterize and define Zealandia," according to this published paper.
The paper calls it a gradual realisation rather than a sudden discovery. New Zealand and New Caledonia, which are isolated islands in the southwest pacific Ocean, were never regarded as Australian continent. Zealandia meets the criteria to be called a continent, according to these researchers.
The paper concludes, "Based on various lines of geological and geophysical evidence, particularly those accumulated in the last two decades, we argue that Zealandia is not a collection of partly submerged continental fragments but is a coherent 4.9 Mkm2 continent."