Australia was once part of a super-continent formation called Gondwana, Aussie scientists believe, and that theory has been shored up by the recent discovery of two islands said to be remnants of the now-splintered pre-historic land mass.

Researchers from Sydney University reported on Thursday that they have discovered the submerged islands some 1600 kilometres from the western coastline of Australia, further cementing assertions that the country should count Gondwana as its mother continent.

According to lead researcher Jo Whittaker, her team's discovery offers glaring clues that connect Australia to Gondwana, which she said was formed billion of years ago and drifted apart into what is now known as Australia, Antarctica and India.

That spectacular tectonic shifting, Whittaker added, transpired some 130 million years ago and left behind residues of island formations like the ones her team stumbled shallowly hidden under international waters.

Researchers so far have collected fossil samples of creatures from the islands that could help them link biological activities that happened while Gondwana was still a single continental formation.

More so, Whittaker said that the discovery affords geophysicists like her more motivation to plot the violent and fantastic formation of present-day Earth and specific to her investigation is the thought that Australia was once locked in a land mass with the Himalayas.

"It will help us figure out the plate kinematic motions that led to India moving away from Australia and heading up off to crash into Eurasia," Whittaker told the Agence France Presse (AFP) in expounding her ongoing investigation that Gondwana's northern tip was once composed of Australia and India.

That northern part, Whittaker said, broke apart from the mega-continent and drifted into a smashing collision with Eurasia, forming in the process the majestic Himalayas mountain ranges.

Scheduled carbon dating of mineral samples from the newly-discovered islands should open up more clues for the research team but this early, experts are assuming that whatever gathered should trace back to at least one billion year ago.

"We're excited to actually get some really good samples and very clear cut continental rocks which show that (the islands) are little fragments of Gondwana that were left behind as India moved away from Australia," Whittaker said.

Her team's work should shed light on the pace of continental shifting and movements, specifically that of Australia, which experts said gradually inches north-bound at an average of seven centimetres each year.

Such activities, scientists said, were part of tectonic plate disturbances that man usually feels in the form of destructive earthquakes and tsunamis like what hit the northeast coast of Japan earlier this year and Indonesia in 2004, killing hundreds of thousands.