The Ontong Java Plateau erupts
The largest volcanic edifice on Earth is built on the Pacific floor in perhaps a million years.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2 million years
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Cretaceous, Mesozoic
Somewhere around 122 million years ago a mantle plume head reaches the base of the Pacific plate and delivers on the order of fifty million cubic kilometres of basalt, building a submarine plateau larger than Alaska. It is the biggest known outpouring of magma in the Phanerozoic, and almost all of it arrives in a geological instant. The carbon dioxide and nutrients it releases into the ocean are the leading suspect for the anoxic crisis that follows within a few hundred thousand years.