Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Fire and brimstone: how volcanoes work
- 2 Eruption styles, hazards and ecosystem impacts
- 3 Volcanoes and global climate change
- 4 Forensic volcanology
- 5 Relics, myths and chronicles
- 6 Killer plumes
- 7 Human origins
- 8 The ash giant/sulphur dwarf
- 9 European volcanism in prehistory
- 10 The rise of Teotihuacán
- 11 Dark Ages: dark nature?
- 12 The haze famine
- 13 The last great subsistence crisis in the Western world
- 14 Volcanic catastrophe risk
- Appendix A Large eruptions
- Appendix B Further reading and data sources
- References
- Index
6 - Killer plumes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Fire and brimstone: how volcanoes work
- 2 Eruption styles, hazards and ecosystem impacts
- 3 Volcanoes and global climate change
- 4 Forensic volcanology
- 5 Relics, myths and chronicles
- 6 Killer plumes
- 7 Human origins
- 8 The ash giant/sulphur dwarf
- 9 European volcanism in prehistory
- 10 The rise of Teotihuacán
- 11 Dark Ages: dark nature?
- 12 The haze famine
- 13 The last great subsistence crisis in the Western world
- 14 Volcanic catastrophe risk
- Appendix A Large eruptions
- Appendix B Further reading and data sources
- References
- Index
Summary
… the long geologic time scale virtually guarantees that potential catastrophes such as large-body impacts and flood basalt volcanism will happen from time to time …, and the results of these very energetic events should be an important aspect of the geologic and biologic records.
M. R. Rampino, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (2010) [86]Mass extinctions punctuate the palaeontological record. These overturns of species and groups of species are so monumental they help to define the framework of the geological timescale, with many smaller extinction events providing finer subdivisions. Perhaps the most famous mass extinction is that which occurred at the boundary between the Cretaceous Period (of the Mesozoic Era) and the Palaeogene Period (of the Cenozoic Era), 65.5 million years ago when, among countless other creatures, the dinosaurs finally went to the wall. The cause of these biological mega-crises has been sought in several directions but there are two main competing mechanisms – bolide (meteorite or comet) impacts versus volcanism on a massive scale. The extra-terrestrial theory argues that especially large bolides – perhaps 10 kilometres or more across – strike Earth from time to time and the collisions would generate sufficiently vast dust clouds to chill the surface, killing off organisms in the oceans and on land. For a long time, the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary and associated extinction have been linked to the impact that formed a 170-km-diameter crater at Chicxulub in México.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Eruptions that Shook the World , pp. 140 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011