A project to study volcanic activity off the Canary Islands has found three sunken volcanos in the Atlantic that once formed a group of islands. These now-underwater mountains exist at a depth between 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) and only 300 feet below the surface. This seamount was named Mount Los Atlantes, after Plato's fictional Atlantis.
Mount Los Atlantes was above the surface during the Eocene epoch. Some some tens of millions of years ago, they stopped erupting and sank under the weight of their own cooling lava. The project has identified beaches, sand dunes, and cliffs among the features of the volcanos.
How could these islands possibly have anything to do with the legend of Atlantis, since they sank so long ago? The peaks aren't that deep, so they would have been exposed during the last ice age, which ran from 115,000 to 11,700 years ago. Sea level was much lower then, and the islands may have developed a flourishing ecosystem during that time, before glacial ice melted, seas rose, and the islands were submerged once again. Read what we know so far about these newly-discovered ancient volcanos at LiveScience. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: IGME-CSIC)