July 11, 2001
Scientists Find 'Lost City' Under Sea
Researchers probing the ocean bottom have found 18-story-high towers of stone — the tallest ever — near a section of volcanic fault ridges that extend for 6,200 miles along the Atlantic Ocean floor.
Inspired by the formations' majestic heights and by the fact that the stone towers appear on a seafloor mountain named Atlantis Massif, the scientists named the field of about two dozen stone structures The Lost City in honor of the fabled, flooded city.
Not only are the underwater stone spirals unusual in composition and their location, scientists think they may offer a glimpse into Earth's earliest environments when life began.
