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A flood basalt (or plateau basalt [1]) is the result of a giant volcanic eruption or series of eruptions that covers large stretches of land or the ocean floor with basalt lava. Many flood basalts have been attributed to the onset of a hotspot reaching the surface of the Earth via a mantle plume . [ 2 ]
Flanking mountains are generally taller along the east side of the rift (although some of this relief may be Laramide in origin). [1] The thickness of the crust increases to the north beneath the rift, where it may be as much as 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) thicker than it is in the south. The crustal thickness underneath the rift is on average 30 ...
Representative continental flood basalts (also known as traps) and oceanic plateaus, together forming a listing of large igneous provinces: [1] Era Period [ a ]
Yellowstone Caldera, also known as the Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field, is a Quaternary caldera complex and volcanic plateau spanning parts of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It is driven by the Yellowstone hotspot and is largely within Yellowstone National Park .
In this case Yellowstone could be expiring. It could be another 1–2 million years (as the North American Plate moves across the Yellowstone hotspot) before a new supervolcano is born to the northeast, and the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field joins the ranks of its deceased ancestors in the Snake River Plain. [12]
Giant animals roamed the area. Beavers were the size of bears, and mammoths were 14 feet (4.3 m) high at the shoulder and weighed 10 tons. Even buffalo were much larger than today. The glaciers continued to retreat and the climate became warmer over the next few millennia; the giant creatures died out about 9,000 years ago. [13]
In 1992, Coffin and Eldholm initially defined the term "large igneous province" as representing a variety of mafic igneous provinces with areal extent greater than 100,000 km 2 that represented "massive crustal emplacements of predominantly mafic (magnesium- and iron-rich) extrusive and intrusive rock, and originated via processes other than 'normal' seafloor spreading."
[1] [2] The Channeled Scablands were scoured by more than 40 cataclysmic floods during the Last Glacial Maximum and innumerable older cataclysmic floods over the last two million years. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] These floods were periodically unleashed whenever a large glacial lake broke through its ice dam and swept across eastern Washington and down ...