Castle Geyser erupting in Yellowstone National Park. (Getty)
Yellowstone had even more explosive past
Almost nine million years ago, the Yellowstone volcanic hotspot, which stretches over areas of the western United States, experienced one of the largest eruptions ever known. An array of analyses has revealed that rocks once thought to have formed in several distinct eruptions came from a single ‘super-eruption’. The event scattered 2,800 cubic kilometres of rock and ash over an area of tens of thousands of square kilometres. “When you get your maps out and measure the scale, you think, ‘That can’t be right,’” says geochemist Thomas Knott. “‘They can’t possibly be that far apart and be from the same volcanic eruption.’”
Scientific American | 4 min readSource: Geology paper
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