Yellowstone surprised me.
Yellowstone surprised me.
That’s amazing. I understood Yellowstone, which I think erupts on average every 600k years, would be big, but not how big in relation to similar events. If I recall, the last Yellowstone blast was 640k years ago.
Because of the way news is presented people really have no sense of scale. For example, a child falls down a well. It’s in the news 24 per day for three days (HUGE RATINGS!) and results in numerous laws to locate and seal old wells. But the principle cause of child endangerment is probably back yard swimming pools; about which the news event would last forty seconds. (Today, a child drowned in the Wilshire neighborhood. Elsewhere, Santa is tracked by NORAD. For that story we go to Brian Jennings at NORAD’s tracking unit in New York. Brian?)
When the news presents something they almost never fit it into an understandable scale or assess a risk.
The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff was formed by the first and largest of 3 major Yellowstone eruptions, and was about 2.1 million years ago. Thus, the Toba eruption 74,000 years ago was even more immense than the most recent big Yellowstone event 640,000 years ago which formed the Lava Creek Tuff.
The teeth were found under a deposit made 80,000 year ago and could be tens of thousands of years older. I think it is certainly possible that homo sapiens tried to enter western Europe in that period, but it was not until the “white” skin color gene occurred in these Africans that they were able to survive in a cold cloudy environment, unless they ate whole fish like sardines. Without ample Vitamin D, dark skinned people are unable to develop the kind of broad pelvic structure that ensures good childbirth outcomes. I have read elsewhere that this gene did not occur until about 40,000 years ago which is when our successful competition with Neanderthals began. Also, as it became progressively colder after the Toba event, the sea level became ever lower, making the Straits of Gibralter a much less difficult barrier. In fact there were periods when the Mediterranean Sea was much smaller. It is too late for me to spend time searching for dates, so no links for now except this map of the Mediterranean during the Ice Ages.
http://www.mmdtkw.org/Gr0102zIceAgeMediterranean.jpg
This site has a number of interesting articles. The one for Dec. 28th covers Supervolcanoes.
http://historyoftheearthcalendar.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_archive.html
