Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

LIPs - Ethiopian and Columbia River flood basalts

The 2 youngest CFBPs appear to have had little if any impact on the biota of the world, as they are also the 2 smallest CFBPs. The Ethiopian Traps are comprised of 0.75 million km³ of lava which erupted from 31 Ma to 28 Ma (Courtillot et al., 1999). These eruptions have been linked (Rampino & Stothers, 1988) with a Late Eocene protracted extinction, though this 34 Ma event predates considerably the Ethiopian eruptions. The Columbia River Traps, that are even smaller, contain 0.17 million km³ of lava and they have been linked with an extinction event in the mid-Miocene with which they coincide (Coffin & Eldholm, 1994). This minor event was first identified in a compilation (Raup & Sepkoski, 1984), is only notable for the elevated extinction rates among the ever-vulnerable, deep sea benthic foraminifera, attributed (Kaiho, 1994) to prolonged cooling of deep ocean water. Mammals in North America were also affected by extinctions in the Late Miocene (Hallam & Wignall, 1997), though these losses occurred several million years after the peak of the Columbia River eruptions.

Sources & Further reading

Wignall, P. B. (2001). "Large igneous provinces and mass extinctions." Earth-Sci. Rev. 53: 1-33.