Asphalt Volcanoes Discovered Off Santa Barbara's Coast

Scientists have discovered a series of 400,000-year-old asphalt volcanoes about 10 miles off the California coast, at the bottom of the Santa Barbara Channel. The largest of these undersea Ice Age domes lies at a depth of 700 feet (220 meters), too deep for scuba diving, which explains why the volcanoes have never before been spotted by humans. The discovery is documented this week in Nature Geoscience. "They're larger than a football-field-long and as tall as a six-story building," says David Valentine, a geoscientist at University of California, Santa Barbara. "They're massive features, and are made completely out of asphalt." read more

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