Triceratops Vertebrae With Yellowstone Supervolcano Ash Covering
( Custom Stand Included! )
- This bone became exposed during the natural erosion process, then covered and redeposited in Yellowstone Supervolcano eruption approximately 630,000 years ago!
Age - 69 - 66 Million Years Old ( Late Cretaceous )
Species - Triceratops
Bone - Vertebrae
Discovered - Wyoming, Lance Creek Formation
Weight - 9.2lbs
Last Yellowstone eruption 630,000 years ago
- Yellowstone Eruption
The Yellowstone Caldera sometimes referred to as the Yellowstone Supervolcano, is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in the Western United States. The caldera and most of the park are located in the northwest corner of Wyoming. The caldera measures 43 by 28 miles (70 by 45 kilometers), and post-caldera lavas spill out a significant distance beyond the caldera proper.
Volcanism at Yellowstone is relatively recent, with calderas created by large eruptions that took place 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago. The calderas lie over the Yellowstone hotspot under the Yellowstone Plateau where light and hot magma (molten rock) from the mantle rises toward the surface. The hotspot appears to move across the terrain in the east-northeast direction and is responsible for the eastern half of Idaho's Snake River Plain, but in fact, the hotspot is much deeper than terrain and remains stationary while the North American Plate moves west-southwest over it.
Over the past 18 million years or so, this hotspot has generated a succession of explosive eruptions and less violent floods of basaltic lava. Together these eruptions have helped create the eastern part of the Snake River Plain (to the west of Yellowstone) from a once-mountainous region. At least a dozen of these eruptions were so massive that they are classified as supereruptions. Volcanic eruptions sometimes empty their stores of magma so swiftly that the overlying land collapses into the emptied magma chamber, forming a geographic depression called a caldera.
