Scientists discovered world’s longest chain of continental volcanoes

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PERTH: The 2000km-long chain, which started forming 33m years ago, runs along the country’s east from the Whitsundays in Queensland to near Melbourne
Scientists have discovered the world’s longest chain of continental volcanoes, stretching 2,000km along eastern Australia.
The volcanic chain, which started its formation 33m years ago, runs from near the Whitsundays in Queensland to near Melbourne. It is nearly three times the length of the Yellowstone volcanic track in the US.
The volcanoes weren’t formed at the edge of tectonic plates, where most volcanoes occur. Instead, they came about from mantle plumes, which are upwellings of hot rock from around 3,000km below the Earth’s surface.
At around 130km underground, these plumes melt, breaching the outer layer of the Earth’s crust, called the lithosphere and creating visible volcanoes.
Scientists studied 15 of these volcanoes in a variety of ways, including analysis of the isotopes of the rocks and reconstructing the path of the volcano chain. The volcano chain has a notable gap in it of around 800km between the Queensland and New South Wales formations.
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“Volcanoes in Queensland are impressive, they are very striking and you can see them from miles away,” said Dr Rhodri Davies of the Australian National University, who led the research, published in Nature.