‘The Deccan Traps’ – the largest igneous province of India is allegedly created by the eruption of two different magma plumes, suggested the new study. Deccan Traps, which is located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India and is believed to be world’s largest volcanic facility, has been a matter of question for scientists since years and the new study has shed some significant lights on its mysterious formation.
The existence of the Deccan Traps has engulfed scientists owing to the enormous amount of magma involved in it. According to the scientists, the amount of magma, the Deccan Traps hold is much more than the mission of a single eruption, and hence there must be two explosions, which resulted in the formation of Deccan Traps. The study, conducted by the researchers from the University of Quebec in Canada is based on a 3-D computer simulation. Through the computer simulation, the researchers represented the events that took place between the modern India and India before 60 million years.
The Deccan Traps consist of multiple coatings of coagulated overflow basalt which joint thickness is more than 2,000 m (6,562 ft). It has covered an area of 500,000 km2 (193,051 sq mi) and comprised a dimension of 512,000 km3 (123,000 cu mi). As believed by the scientists, initially, the facility may have covered 1.5 million km2 – the half size of Modern India. But later it was reduced to the current mass, because of the corrosion and plate tectonics
According to the earlier studies, the formation of The Deccan Traps started 66.25 million years ago- the final stage of the Cretaceous epoch. The mass volcanic eruption is estimated to take place some 66 million years ago at the Western Ghats, and this series of outbreaks is projected to have lasted not less than 30,000 years in total. The mass eruption event of Deccan Traps also led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. As believed by the scientists, the eruption of magma blocked the sunlight and forced the global temperatures to significantly plummet, resulting in the wipe out of the entire genre of dinosaurs.
But the new three-dimensional (3D) tomography-based model, developed by Petar Glisovic and Alessandro Forte from the University of Quebec has revealed that there are two massive magma eruptions who significantly contributed to the creation of Deccan Traps. The due to epidemic took place simultaneously some 10 million years ago, resulting in the formation of Deccan Traps. The first event is dubbed as Reunion, while scientists called the second as the Comoros plume. The complete details of the study appeared in the journal Science.