The North Atlantic Igneous Province erupts
A plume under Greenland floods the region in basalt as the North Atlantic prepares to open.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 8 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Paleocene, Cenozoic
Beginning around 62 million years ago, the mantle plume now under Iceland delivers enormous volumes of magma beneath Greenland, the Faroes, western Scotland and Ireland. Millions of cubic kilometres of basalt erupt in two main phases, the second coinciding with the actual continental breakup. It is one of the largest igneous provinces of the Cenozoic, and its later pulse — intruding organic-rich sediments and cooking methane out of them — is the leading candidate for the carbon injection that drives the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.