Indian Ocean cocktail party leaves trail of party hats behind

Scientists have unexpectedly found traces of the supercontinent Gondwana in the Indian Ocean – in the process solving a mystery behind a large group of ocean ‘mountains’ known as seamounts, including Christmas Island.

The German-Australian team of marine geologists set out on the German research vessel Sonne to map and sample about 60 seamounts – ranging in height from one to three kilometres – in one the world’s largest volcanic seamount provinces off the north west Australian coast.

Prof Dietmar Müller, Ms Ana Gibbons, University of Sydney

Nature Geoscience

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