The Lava Creek eruption
Yellowstone's third and most recent supereruption forms the caldera that exists today.
- When
- Known to
- ± 5 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
About 631,000 years ago the Yellowstone hotspot produces the Lava Creek Tuff, roughly 1,000 cubic kilometres of ash and pumice, and the roof of the emptied magma chamber collapses to form the present Yellowstone Caldera — a basin some 70 kilometres across. Ash reached as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Recent work suggests it may have been two closely spaced eruptions rather than one. Nothing on this scale has occurred there since, and the system has erupted lava many times without a caldera event.