The research from the EarthByte Group at the University of Sydney, and published in December, looked back millions of years to explore how volcanoes formed on Australia's east coast.

In the past, volcanoes were thought to form on the edges of tectonic plates or over soft spots in the Earth's crust which allow magma to reach the surface.

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However, volcanoes in Tasmania, and throughout Australia's east, occur about 5000 kilometres from the edge of a tectonic plate.

Geoscientist Ben Mather said they were able to discover the source of the volcanoes by looking at the chemistry of land surrounding Australian volcanoes and virtually recreating what the Earth looked like millions of years ago.

"What we were able to find is a common fingerprint between all these different rocks from across the country and [we could] kind of piece together a uniform mechanism based on that unique signature that we found," he said.

The EarthByte Group found there is a slab of rock, made up of volatile substances such as water and carbon dioxide, which sits underneath Eastern Australia 410 kilometres below the Earth's surface.

When tectonic plates move, seafloor is subducted. That subduction process, at the Tonga-Kermadec Trench which runs from New Zealand to Samoa, sends vibrations to the dormant reservoir of volatile substances under eastern Australia. Those vibrations lead to the release of volatile substances.

Researchers found that when there were sudden movements along those plate boundaries more of those volatile materials would bubble to the surface and produce volcanoes.

"What we were able to find is a common fingerprint between all these different rocks from across the country and kind of piece together a uniform mechanism based on that unique signature that we found," Dr Mather said.

"The interesting thing about what we have found is that a lot of the volcanoes are all linked but, they might have different surface expressions.

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"So we kind of know how the magma, more or less, travel from this volatile enriched layer within the deep interior of the Earth and how that got to the surface. But, when it actually gets to the surface it might exhibit itself in different forms."

While Tasmania is likely to have multiple volcanoes, The Nut remains the only one that has been discoverable, with others likely to be small and surrounded by plains.

Dr Mather said there are likely undiscovered volcanoes across all of Australia's Eastern states.

"At Mount Gambier or The Nut in Tasmania you get quite a large eruption which causes an actual volcanic crater," he said.

"Whereas in other places you might actually get just a very small pimple at the surface surrounded by a large plain. It is probably quite likely there is still some volcanoes that we just haven't discovered yet."

He said there was no cause for concern relating to future volcanic eruptions.

"The most recent eruption is possibly Mount Gambier in South Australia - that erupted 3000 years ago - and there is Indigenous memories passed down from that eruption," Dr Mather said.

"So it erupted in living memory but we wouldn't expect another eruption in our lifetime, or our children's lifetime. Maybe one in the next 5000 years but we will be long gone."

Dr Mather said the research had given him a greater appreciation for the natural world.

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"It is pretty remarkable that we do live in a volcanic landscape that has been shaped over the last 100 million years. That itself has given rise to the early agricultural boom in Australia because when you get a volcanic eruption it adds lots of nutrients to the soil," he said.

"It think it is pretty great that it happened and that we were able to find a common mechanism that links all of that volcanism from the southern tip of Tasmania up into northern Queensland."

Research co-author, and EarthByte group joint coordinator, Dietmar Mller said the group now needed to apply this research to other parts of the world with intraplate volcanoes.

The research could potentially apply to the Western side of the United States, Eastern China and near Bermuda.

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