GOA / MUMBAI, INDIA
Deccan Traps
Am I going to use the term ‘dinosaur’ again? Yeah.
"Why?" you ask. Well, read on.
For a lot of you who have travelled through western and central India, these landforms may be a recognisable sight.
Commonly known as the Deccan Trap, these landforms comprise one of the earth’s Large Igneous Provinces covering close to 500,000 sqkm., roughly the size of France.
The Deccan Trap was formed due to the eruption of Reunion Hotspot about 66 million years ago.
Reunion Hotspot lies under what is Reunion Island today which is located between Madagascar and Mauritius.
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This was when the continental drift was in progress, which is why a landmass formed off the eastern coast of Africa is now a part of India.
©AlishaVasudev2021
So, dinosaurs.
Given the overlap between the creation of these landforms and the extinction of dinosaurs, some geologists believe that the formation of the Deccan Traps greatly sped up the process of extinction.
The gases emitted during this incident, along with reduced sunlight, greatly impacted the earth’s ecology which led to the eventual wiping out of the species, along with meteoric activity at the time.
. . .
Fun Fact: Piton de la Fournaise, located in the Reunion Islands and a part of the Reunion Hotspot, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes and erupted just last month.