The Kerguelen Plateau erupts
A drowned continent-sized volcanic province rises in the southern Indian Ocean.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 23 million years
- Known to
- ± 3 million years
- Era
- Cretaceous, Mesozoic
As India, Australia and Antarctica pull apart, a plume builds the Kerguelen Plateau over tens of millions of years, an oceanic large igneous province about a third the size of Australia. Drill cores recover wood, coal and pollen from its early history, showing that parts of it stood above water and carried forest before subsiding. Its later pulses fall close enough in time to the Cenomanian-Turonian ocean crisis that Kerguelen volcanism has been proposed as the trigger.