Joey O'Rourke-Extinct Supervolcano Discovered in Europe.

Supervolcanoes are responsible for some the most violent explosions ever in Earth’s history. Although there has not been an eruption in tens of thousands of years, they still pose a risk to human civilization. Supervolcanoes, also referred to as calderas, are massive lava chambers which explode when gasses from inside the Earth create enormous amounts of pressure. These massive explosions result in large amounts of ash being deposited over the much of the continent where the explosion occurred. The fossil supervolcano, found in the Italian Alps’ Sesia Valley is an important discovery because it is located on a rare uplift in earth’s crust. This uplift was created when the African and European tectonic plates began colliding 30 million years ago causing part of Italy to be turned up on its side. This allows scientists to see the pluming of this extinct supervolcano. Until this discovery scientists had only been able to examine supervolcanoes up to five kilometers in depth. For volcanoes as massive as these, this is not deep enough to obtain the important information into how these volcanoes work.
With this new discovery scientists will be able to look down twenty-five kilometers. This will show them how lava is supplied to these calderas, allowing them to better understand how and why these volcanoes erupt when they do. In the last million years it is predicted that less than two dozen of these eruptions have occurred, but scientists are certain there will be another sometime in the future. There are two supervolcanoes in the United States alone. Long Valley in California last erupted 760,000 years ago and covered what is now, the entire southwestern United States with ash. Yellow Stone National Park is one of the largest supervolcanoes in the world.
With this new information Scientists will be better prepared to predict when these massive volcanoes will erupt. Although this is a very rare occurrence, it is one that could severely threaten life. When Lake Toba exploded 74,000 years ago it is thought to have killed off 60 percent of the humans on earth at the time, in what is thought to be the largest explosion on earth in the last twenty-five million years.

“Southern Methodist University: ‘Rosetta Stone of Supervolcanoes Discovered in Italian Alps.’"Ecology, Environment, and Conservation via NewsRx.com. October, 23 2009. http://proquest.com.