Central Atlantic Magmatic Province

The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, or CAMP, was one of the largest volcanic outpourings in Earth's history. Around 201 million years ago, lava erupted across what was then the center of Pangaea and is now eastern North America, northern South America, western Africa and southwestern Europe, four continents. In all it covered a region of roughly 10 million square kilometers, much of it as sheets of basalt and as sills, which are layers of magma injected between rock. The Palisades on the Hudson River near New York City is one such sill.

CAMP began as Pangaea started to pull apart, with the crust thinning over an area of rising hot mantle. Uranium-lead dating of tiny zircon crystals has tied the first big pulse of eruptions closely to the end-Triassic extinction, within a few tens of thousands of years. The eruptions poured out huge amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur gases, which likely brought rapid warming and acid seas, followed by short volcanic winters. Eruptions came in several pulses over some 600,000 years. The pulses help explain why about three quarters of marine species and many land animals died out.