Despite the fact that the entire scientific community is concerned about the threat of the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano located in the United States, geologists point out that there are much more powerful giants in the country, the risk of an eruption of which geologists do not exclude in the future.
An international team of scientists led by Thomas R. Knott recently conducted a study of the ancient Cassia Hills, which are located in the US state of Idaho. It turned out that over the past 16 million years, 12 large-scale explosive eruptions took place in the area, which burned and devastated very large areas from Oregon to Yellowstone Park.
Each of these explosions left large deposits of volcanic materials that differ from each other in mineralogical, chemical and magnetic characteristics. Scientists believe that the eruptions in the Cassius Hills were hot and occurred much more often than the explosions of Yellowstone. The consequence was a deep rift along the Snake River and a subsidence of the earth's surface by 3 kilometers, which led to a significant difference in elevation between Cassia and the Yellowstone plateau.
The most intense volcanic activity in the Cassia Hills was in the period from 11.3 to 8.1 million years ago. In the course of the study, scientists have established that the eruptive Castleford Crossing event, which occurred about 8.1 million years ago, was a super-eruption.
In addition, as noted by geologists, in the United States there is the famous supervolcano La Garita, which is located in Colorado and erupted for the last time about 28 million years ago. At the same time, despite the fact that the size of the giant's caldera is smaller than the Yellowstone caldera, its eruption was several times more powerful than the most powerful eruption of the Yellowstone volcano. La Garita threw out 5 thousand cubic kilometers of lava, and the volcanic explosion in its force 5 thousand times exceeded the destructive power of the tsar-bomb with a power of 50 megatons. At the same time, the volcano completely wiped out the adjacent area of 30 thousand square kilometers.
Despite the fact that these giants are considered extinct and do not show any activity, geologists do not exclude that disasters may recur.
