Scientists have discovered a large volcano in the Pacific Ocean approximately 1,000 miles east of Japan.
Named Tamu Massif, the volcano is 280 by 400 miles, or 100,000 square miles. It is the same size of Arizona and New Mexico, and is easily the largest volcano on Earth.
"This finding goes against what we thought, because we found that it's one huge volcano," said William Sager, the lead author in a study about the volcano that was published earlier this week in a journal called Nature Geoscience.
The second largest volcano on Earth is approximately 2,000 square miles, according to the study.
Sager started studying Tamu Massif around 20 years ago. The name Tamu is short for Texas A&M University, where Sager worked at when his research first began, and Massif is French for "massive" and is also a scientific term for a "large mountain" according to National Geographic.
The volcano is the largest and oldest structure located in the oceanic plateau called Shatsky Rise in the Pacific Ocean.
Experts have known about Shatsy Rise since the early 20th century, when it was first mapped out, according to Sager.
"We knew it was a big mountain range, but we didn't know what the structure was like or how it formed," said Sager.
Scientists originally thought Tamu Massif was made up of many different volcanos that merged together, but that changed thanks to research conducted from 2010 through 2012.
"We saw what appear to be lava flows going out from the center of the volcano in all directions, with no obvious large secondary source of volcanism," said Sager.
The volcano went extinct shortly after forming, according to Sager, meaning it is no longer active. Experts believe that it was created sometime in the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous period, or 145 million years ago.
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