Active volcanoes on the moon when dinosaurs were alive?

New NASA findings suggest there might still have been active lava flow 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs were still roaming.

There are  many newly discovered young volcanic deposits on the moon. 

These areas are thought to be remnants of small lava eruptions that occurred recently in the moon's past.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has provided researchers strong evidence the Moon’s volcanic activity slowed gradually.

“The existence and age of the irregular mare patches tell us that the lunar mantle had to remain hot enough to provide magma for the small-volume eruptions that created these unusual young features,” said Sarah Braden, the lead author of the study.

Earth's gravity stretches and compresses the moon to warm its interior. 

The strains caused by Earth’s gravitational tug on the Moon heats up its interior.

"For a world thought to have gone cold long ago, the discovery points to a place that still releases internal heat in fits and starts", says Mark Robinson, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, Tempe.

 “The big story is that the moon is warmer than we thought,” he says.

Much of the moon’s near side is paved over in dark plains of basalt.

The activity that created these ancient lava fields peaked about 3 billion years.

On the near side of the moon they found 70 structures that appear to be lava flows.

The researchers think that some of these features are the remnants of low-lying shield volcanoes, which ooze out a soupy lava.