Scientists have found evidence of volcanoes on the far side of the Moon.
The new discovery, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience is a rare example of volcanism on the lunar surface not associated with asteroid, meteor or comet impact events.
Until now the best known examples of volcanism were on the Moon's near side in a region known as the Procellarum KREEP terrane.
A team of scientists, led by Dr Bradley Jolliff fromWashington University in St Louis, used images and other data gathered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter(LRO) to assess the composition of an unusual region on the far side of the moon called the Compton-Belkovich thorium anomaly.
They focused on an area containing numerous domes, some more than six kilometres high.
The domes featured steeply sloping sides which Jolliff and colleagues interpret as, "volcanic in origin and formed from viscous lava".
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