Scientists have discovered the world's longest chain of volcanoes in Australia, hidden in plain sight. This Australian volcano chain isn't a complete surprise as geologists knew about small, separate chains of volcanic activity on the island continent since long.

But, new study has revealed a hidden hotspot once churned underneath regions, which have no signs with surface volcanism, and have connected these separate strings of volcanoes into one megachain.

The 1,240-mile-long (2,000 kilometers) chain of fire has covered most of eastern Australia. It is ranging from Hillsborough in the north, where rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef, to the island of Tasmania in the south.

In a statement, Rhodri Davies, an earth scientist at Australian National University, said that the track is about three times the length of the famous Yellowstone hotspot track on the North American continent.

Since long, scientists had long known that 4 different tracks of past volcanic activity fringed the eastern portion of Australia. Each one of them showed different signs of past volcanic activity, from vast lava fields to fields awash in a volcanic mineral known as leucitite, which is dark gray to black in color. Some of these sites were hundreds of miles away from each other due to which geologists used to think that the areas weren't linked.

But Davies and his colleagues were doubtful that the Australian volcanism had a common source, which is a mantle plume that led to the melt down of the crust when the Australian plate inched northward over millions of years.