Satellite images show a doughnut-shaped mound in southern Australia. New research suggests that the formation that looks like a big bullseye is the remains of an ancient reef that was left over from a time when the ocean was large.
The data from the TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement was used in the new study. According to the European Union's European Data Portal, the DLR produced detailed 3D maps of the Earth's landmasses from pole to pole.
The Nullarbor Plain is a flat, remarkably dry landscape that covers about 200,000 square miles of southern Australia. The research associate at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts was the lead author of the study.
The land has remained relatively unchanged since the ocean retreated 14 million years ago. Unlike wetter, more geologically active regions, the dry plain has not been extensively sculpted by glaciers and rivers flowing over its surface.
Coral Reefs can be seen from the sky.
Large areas of the Nullarbor Plain have remained largely unchanged by weathering and erosion over millions of years, making it a unique geological canvas recording ancient history in remarkable ways. There is a bullseye-shaped formation that is 0.77 miles wide and just a few yards tall.
Lipar and Barham said they thought they had found the first meteorite impact crater. When we looked at the bullseye we didn't see any indicators of an impact.
The team collected rock samples from the bullseye that they polished and sliced thinly. By placing the rock slices under a microscope, the researchers discovered deposits of a type of rock.
The Great Barrier Reef can be found with similar ring-shaped mounds made from the skeletons of green algae. The researchers thought the bullseye was an ancient isolated'reef' due to its similarity.
After the land was lifted above the waves, the biogenic mound degraded so slowly that it's still recognizable 14 million years later.
It was originally published on Live Science
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