He said: ”After the partial breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, into the pieces now known as Australia, India and Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau began forming on top of a mushroom-shaped mantle upwelling, called a mantle plume, as well as along deep sea, mid-oceanic mantle ridges.
“The volcanism lasted for so long because magmas caused by the mantle plume were continuously flowing out through the mid-oceanic ridges, which successively acted as a channel, or a ‘magma conveyor belt’ for more than 30 million years.
“Other volcanoes would stop erupting because, when temperatures cooled, the channels became clogged by ‘frozen’ magmas.
“For the Kerguelen Plateau, the mantle plume acts as a Bunsen burner that kept allowing the mantle to melt, resulting in an extraordinarily long period of eruption activity.”