The Siberian Traps erupt
The largest volcanic event of the last 500 million years buries an area the size of Australia in lava.
- When
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Permian, Paleozoic
Beginning around 252 million years ago, eruptions in Siberia release several million cubic kilometres of basalt over roughly a million years. Their lethality lay not in the lava but in what it intruded: magma spreading sideways as sills cooked coal, salt and organic-rich sediment, liberating enormous volumes of carbon dioxide, methane and halogens. Recent work identifies that switch from surface flows to sill intrusion as the precise deadly interval.