London: Scientists analysing images of Mars have discovered a network of supervolcanoes that could have buried the red plant in ash when they were active billions of years ago, Sky News reported Wednesday.

The discovery by researchers at London’s Natural History Museum and NASA suggests that early Mars was more active than previously thought with massive volcanoes that may have rivalled supervolcanoes on Earth.

The finding described in the journal Nature suggests that such massive volcanoes spewed huge clouds of lava and ash in the Martian northern highlands, a place not known to be active in the past.

Supervolcanoes, which can spew out thousands of times more magma than regular volcanoes, erupt with such force that they do not leave mountains of lava.