Haraldur Sigurdsson of the University of Rhode Island discovered the lost kingdom of Tambora, which was wiped out by a giant volcanic eruption in 1815.
Records suggest that the eruption of Mount Tambora was one of the most violent in human history.
Some 10,000 local people were killed by flows of hot gas, ash and rock. As many as 117,000 died in total as disease epidemics and starvation due to crop failures contributed to the death toll.
The year 1816 became known as "the Year Without a Summer" because of the global cooling that followed the eruption due to the release of huge amounts of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.