Scientists have created a new map of the Earth's seafloor by using satellite data, which revealed massive underwater scars and thousands of uncharted sea mountains in some of the most remote and deepest places of the world's oceans.

The researchers said they used gravity measurements of the seafloor from radar equipment on the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellite and NASA's Jason-1 satellite to capture underwater geological features in "unprecedented detail," according to Reuters.

"The pull of gravity reflects the topography and tectonics of the seafloor," said David Sandwell, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego who led the study.

Study researcher Dietmar Müller, from the University of Sydney, said approximately 71 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water and around 90 percent of the seafloor is uncharted by survey ships that use acoustic beams to map the depths.

"We know much more about the topography of Mars than we know about Earth's seafloor," Müller said, according to Reuters. "The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 earlier this year has heightened global awareness of the poor knowledge of our ocean depths."

The map showed seafloor and sub-seafloor structures. They include a mid-ocean ridge beneath the Gulf of Mexico with a length about equal to the width of Texas as well as another ridge under the South Atlantic west of Angola about 500 miles long that formed after the continent of South America separated from Africa, according to Reuters.

The "spreading ridges" are cracks in the Earth formed where the planet's plates moved apart and molten material called magma filled them, the researchers said.

"Knowing where and when such ridges existed is essential for deciphering planet Earth's geological past," Müller said.

The map also shows details on thousands of undersea mountains, or seamounts, rising 1 mile or more from the seafloor. Some are covered by a number of miles of sediments, the researchers said.

The map could also have applications for militaries and for oil exploration, Sandwell said.

The conclusions the researchers made about seabed topography may not be as accurate as acoustic beam methods used by ships however.

"But the global coverage is much better and our method is much cheaper, especially as we are mostly using satellite data that were collected for another purpose," said Müller, who estimated that a complete survey of the deep ocean using ships would cost between $2 billion and $3 billion.

See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?