In a classic scenario of not "seeing it until you see it," a team of scientists identified the longest chain of volcanoes spanning a single continent.
According to Live Science, geologists were well aware of individual volcano chains stretching north to south toward Australia's eastern coast, but recently discovered a hotspot in the Earth's mantle that connected them. The researchers' study is published in the journal Nature.
The chain's northern point lies by Whitsundays in North Queensland and runs southbound all the way to the island of Tasmania, totaling 1,240 miles (2,000km).
"We realized that the same hotspot had caused volcanoes in the Whitsundays and the central Victoria region, and also some rare features in New South Wales, roughly halfway between them," Rhodri Davies, an earth scientists at The Australian National University (ANU), said in a press release. "The track is nearly three times the length of the famous Yellowstone hotspot track on the North American continent."
Over millions of years, Australia drifted north at an ever-so-slow pace over a mantle plume, which was fueling a hotspot that was contributing to all the volcano range's activity. Named the Cosgrove volcanic track, none of the mainland volcanoes in the chain have been active in recent memory, Live Science noted.
"Now that we know there is a direct relationship between the volume and chemical composition of magma and the thickness of the continent, we can go back and interpret the geological record better," study co-author Ian Campbell, of the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, said in the release.
Said Davies, "There are observations of higher mantle temperatures and increased seismicity in this region."
