Environmental News Network - Slowing of Continental Plate Movement Controlled Timing of Earth’s Largest Volcanic Events

Details: By Trinity College Dublin; 09.Sep

Scientists have shed new light on the timing and likely cause of major volcanic events that occurred millions of years ago and caused such climatic and biological upheaval that they drove some of the most devastating extinction events in Earth’s history.

Cheryl Porter

Scientists have shed new light on the timing and likely cause of major volcanic events that occurred millions of years ago and caused such climatic and biological upheaval that they drove some of the most devastating extinction events in Earth’s history.

Surprisingly the new research, published today in leading international journal Science Advances, suggests a slowing of continental plate movement was the critical event that enabled magma to rise to the Earth’s surface and deliver the devastating knock-on impacts.

Earth’s history has been marked by major volcanic events, called Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) – the largest of which have caused major increases in atmospheric carbon emissions that warmed Earth’s climate, drove unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and resulted in mass extinctions on land and in the oceans.

Using chemical data from ancient mudstone deposits obtained from a 1.5 km-deep borehole in Wales, an international team led by scientists from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Natural Sciences was able to link two key events from around 183 million years ago (the Toarcian period).

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Slowing of Continental Plate Movement Controlled Timing of Earth’s Largest Volcanic Events