Dr Robin Beaman, from Queensland's James Cook University, said the researchers located a cluster of hills, or knolls, more than 1,100m beneath the surface.
"What we discovered was the smoking gun," he told the BBC.
"It was quite clear that those knolls were the remains of a very large undersea landslide that had occurred some time ago."
That time was at least 300,000 years ago, he said, because coral fossils collected from the knolls went back that far, and the landslide would have predated them.
He described it as "catastrophic collapse" because the knolls - as long as 3.6km (2.2 miles) - were found 30km from their original location.
Other evidence of the landslide would have been buried over time, he said.
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