Researchers have discovered a series of large undersea sediment deposits in a region near Italy that were likely formed by an ancient volcanic supereruption.
![(A) The Marsili Basin lies in ~3000 m water depth in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Ocean Drilling Program Leg 107 Sites 650 and 651 marked as red circles. Red box shows map in (B). Campi Flegrei (CF) fields (source of 39.8 ka Campanian Ignimbrite and 14.9 ka Neapolitan Yellow Tuff) shown with nearby submarine canyons (Dohrm [DC] and Magnaghi [MC]) as yellow lines. Ve—Vesuvius; SC—Stromboli Canyon. (B) CHIRP subbottom profiles shown as white dashed lines. Continuous white lines involved the acquisition of additional airgun seismic data. Bathymetry is a merged dataset of a 40-m grid CHIANTI multibeam bathymetry together with EMODNET bathymetry (EMODnet Bathymetry Consortium, 2020). Contour interval is 1000 meters. Figure 2 is E-W profile through Site 650. -- Geology](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Newstudyreveals.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Researchers have discovered a series of large undersea sediment deposits in a region near Italy that were likely formed by an ancient volcanic supereruption.