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Thursday, July 25, 2013

Toba catastrophe theory

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Toba supereruption
Tobaeruption.png
Illustration of what the eruption might have looked like from approximately 26 miles (42 km) above Pulau Simeulue.
Volcano Lake Toba
Date Between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago
Type Ultra Plinian
Location Sumatra, Indonesia
2.6845°N 98.8756°ECoordinates: 2.6845°N 98.8756°E
VEI 8.3
Impact Most recent supereruption; plunged Earth into 6 years of volcanic winter, possibly causing a bottleneck in human evolution and significant changes to regional topography.[1][dated info]
Toba zoom.jpg
Lake Toba is the resulting crater lake
The Toba supereruption (Youngest Toba Tuff or simply YTT[2]) was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred sometime between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago at Lake Toba (Sumatra, Indonesia). It is recognized as one of the Earth's largest known eruptions. The related catastrophe hypothesis holds that this event caused a global volcanic winter of 6–10 years and possibly a 1,000-year-long cooling episode.
The Toba event [3][4] is the most closely studied super-eruption.[5] In 1993, science journalist Ann Gibbons suggested a link between the eruption and a bottleneck in human evolution, and Michael R. Rampino of New York University and Stephen Self of the University of Hawaii at Manoa gave support to the idea. In 1998, the bottleneck theory was further developed by Stanley H. Ambrose of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Other researchers have questioned or found no evidence for a link between the Toba eruption and such a bottleneck.

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