A prehistoric volcano in a horizontal position , instead of a vertical one, has been found in the mountain range of the Italian Alps . Experts describe it as a unique geological case in the world .
This oddity of the Earth has been discovered in Valsesia, in northern Italy, by the Italian Silvano Sinigoi, professor of petrography at the University of Trieste, and the American James Quick, from the Methodist University of Dallas. Twenty years ago, the two scientists began researching the rocks in the area and intuited that there was a fossil volcano there, which was active 288 million years ago.
Confirmation of the discovery came a few months ago, when the geological materials collected by scientists were analyzed by dating machines at Stanford University, in the United States, and Canberra, in Australia. The analyzes, which were based on the relationship between lead and uranium within the zirconium crystals, revealed that all the rocks of the volcano have the same age because, instead of being vertical, it is horizontal, since it "collapsed "when the tectonic plates of Europe and Asia collided, 50 million years ago .
Scientists suspect that, 288 million years ago, the volcano expelled 300 to 500 cubic kilometers of terrestrial material, which darkened the sky and likely changed the Earth's climate.
