A world undone
Around 201 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea began to crack. The seams of this rupture were not gentle; they were the site of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), the most extensive continental flood basalt event in the planet's history. Over a period of about 600,000 years, a series of colossal volcanic pulses tore the continent apart. The total volume of magma involved was staggering, estimated at over 3 million cubic kilometers. This event unfolded across a vast area of more than 10 million square kilometers, leaving behind basaltic dikes, sills, and lava flows from present-day North America to South America, Africa, and Europe.
The eruptions were not a slow leak. The main volcanic activity occurred in at least four distinct pulses, some potentially lasting less than a century each. During these pulses, the eruption rate could have been as high as 8 cubic kilometers per year, a rate more than ten times that of modern eruptions in Hawaii. This immense outpouring of lava wasn't just a geological spectacle; it was a planetary catastrophe. The event caused the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction, an event that eliminated about 76% of all terrestrial and marine species. This extinction allowed dinosaurs to become the dominant land animals for the next 135 million years.