Have Volcanoes Always Been A Feature Of The Earth's Landscape?

Volcanoes have been around almost as long as planet Earth. They have also occurred on other planets such as Mars and are still happening on planets such as Jupiter. The oldest rocks, on Earth date from about 3.96 billion years ago. Scientists have examined these rocks and studied their properties and have evidence that there were volcanoes, continents, oceans, and crustal plates all that time ago.

Between 65 million years ago and 280 million years ago, the land masses on Earth were not in the separate continents that we know today. Instead there was one large land mass that is now called Pangaea. This huge piece of land was separated over millions of years as the crustal plates moved and earthquakes and volcanoes played a large part in this process.

The Giants' causeway in Northern Ireland. This is formed from a basalt lava flow that erupted out of shield volcanoes during the Palaeocene period. That was between 55 million years ago and 65 million years ago.

Volcanoes have been responsible for huge destruction of life in ancient times. The Permian extinction happened 250 million years ago when volcanoes in Siberia pumped out about 10 gigatonnes of carbon as carbon dioxide. The global warming that followed wiped out four fifths of all sea life and it took 5 million years for the planet to recover.