Tag: volcanoes
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There’s Something MUCH Bigger Than Yellowstone. And It Will Happen Again
PBS Terra has an interesting video about super volcanoes and they larger cousin… Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs). Yellowstone was massive. Roughly a thousand times larger than the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the biggest eruption in the history of the continental United States. And if Yellowstone erupted again, the consequences for the U.S. and the…
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How a Mass Extinction Driven by Ancient Volcanoes Led to the Age of the Dinosaurs
Smithsonian Magazine features a story on the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction, a pivotal event that reshaped life on Earth. The late Triassic was vastly different from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods that followed. During this time, early dinosaurs played only minor roles, while the landscape was dominated by giant amphibians, a diverse array of crocodilian relatives—ranging…
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Palaeocast Episode 112: Extinction of the dinosaurs
Palaeocast has an episode on the extinction of the dinosaurs. The episode is an interview with Dr Alessandro Chiarenza about some very thorough analysis that compares the Chicxulub asteroid event with the volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Traps. The paper detailing this analysis can be found in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of…
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PBS Eons: How Volcanoes Froze the Earth (Twice)
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about Snowball Earth, which is the theory that the whole earth was covered by ice. This happened at least twice in the last 700 million years. Over 600 million years ago, sheets of ice coated our planet on both land and sea. How did this…
