Scientists said the volcano was 2,690 feet (820 meters) high following a spate of puzzling earthquakes that struck near a normally seismically calm area.
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After gathering geological data, including information from a 2019 underwater survey of the region, the team realized there was a new underwater volcano about 1.5 times the height of the One World Trade Center in New York.
What’s more, the new mountain draws from the deepest volcanic magma reservoir known to scientists.
“The source of the magma, the reservoir, is very deep about 34 miles (55 kilometers) underground,” study lead researcher Nathalie Feuillet, a marine geoscientist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics (IPGP) told Live Science Thursday (21/10/2021 ).
“This is the first time in volcanology that we can see a reservoir so deep at the bottom of the lithosphere,” he said. The lithosphere is the Earth’s outermost shell which includes the upper mantle and crust.
Between May 2018 and May 2021 more than 11,000 earthquakes were detected rocking Mayotte, a small island and French territory between Madagascar and Mozambique. The most powerful earthquake was 5.9.
In July 2018, scientists also realized that according to GPS data, Mayotte was moving eastward at about 20 centimeters per year.
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