That Time the American West Blew Up 

You folks at Eons really do a great job.

The Mid-Tertiary Ignimbrite Flare-up is responsible for a large majority of SW Colorado's ore deposits. Including lots of gold, silver, and copper. If you look from satellite, you can still see the La Garita Caldera via the circular depression in the ground around Creede, CO. It would have been a "fun" type to be a volcanologist back then, 25+ million years ago when CA, NM, UT, AZ, and NV had an absurd number of volcanic activity, far surpassing levels witnessed in modern day Indonesia. Another fun remnant supervolcano you can look in (not the Wheeler Geologic Area, although it is also fun) is the Chiricahua National Monument. It has 900 ft thick ignimbrite pillars which tower several hundred feet above the landscape and are still exposed. It is a national monument which honestly deserves and might soon get National Park status. Also did I mention that it also has a population of ocelots? You read that correctly, and it is in Arizona.

The Mt St Helens animals literally sleeping through a volcano eruption is a mood ngl

“They don’t just gently puke out lava”. Callie, you are a true poet 😂❤

The Mid-Tertiary Ignimbrite Flare-up was also a great 70's rock band.

This is why i love pbs eons, I never heard of this mid tertiary Ignimbrite flareup before until now. You can never learn too much.

"Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be a non sinking Farallon Plate that becomes Ignimbrite."

It's fascinating to see how species recover after the eruption. Our crew managed to film a unique phenomenon happening in the volcanic caves of Mount Elgon. Elephants have learned to mine a network of hidden caves for salt and mineral deposits. We follow them deep inside the extinct volcano to learn more about this incredible behaviour, and it's so interesting!

My late dad is with whom I watched PBS as a kid back in the 1970s, and he would've *loved* Eons! Thanks for doing such a great job.

I think the fact that life didn't care about these freaking supervolcanoes puts the other mass extinctions into perspective

8:19 Thank you for hitting the "Uhh" this time. ❤️ Jeff Goldblum would be proud.

My dad was one of the herpetologists studying St Helen's survivors, so I bet they referenced his paper. Cool that it's finding eyes 34yr later!

Wow, I'd never heard of that period. As a kid a science overview book listed supervolanos in axway that suggested they were associated with a past era, but as I learned more I assumed that was just because no supervolcanos had happened for a while. I had no idea there was kind of an era of supervolcanos. Wow!

The way the area around Mount Saint Helens came back after the eruption was mine boggling. That being said, I remember my sixth grade teacher talking about still getting ash out of his gutter a decade after the eruption.

I was always curious about this largest of super-eruptions. It’s amazing how even the most devastatingly energetic disasters are still just part of the circle of life.

My takeaway from this is that suburbs and strip malls are more hostile to life than any volcano

This can be just a video about the ancient volcanoes of North America, but Eons made it more impactful with this approach.

A lot of ash also just falls from the sky and builds up like nasty, scratchy snow. It’s not as sticky as snow, though, so it can blow off of things like leaves, allowing trees to still see the light as long as they’re not completely buried.

Funny, I did a presentation on this for my geology course last semester in college, and nobody else had heard of it prior to my presentation. I would have loved to see a mention of slab rollback and how it significantly lowered the pressure on the underlying mantle to cause decompression melting, though I guess that's just the GeologyHub fan in me showing.

Love how you use metrics. After almost 30 years in the US, I still need to translate most imperial measurements into metrics to make them understandable.

I love volcanos. Knowing that their ash can help fertilize the areas they destroy is almost enough to believe in a provincial world.

Archaeology and Geology intertwined in a video. This is one of my favourite Eons video.

My brother took his life recently and y'all's videos have really help distract from it. Thanks for doing what you do.

There is a really nice fossil site in Northern Nebraska called Ash Falls, went there for the first time in 20 years a couple of years ago and it's impressive how much is still being uncovered!

Life said to the volcano;"don't give me your ash-itutde"

"Storm Cloud of Fire" is also my new Power Metal album.

I wonder if the toads at mount St Helen's went into hibernation after the eruption, or if they instinctively knew it was coming somehow, and went into hibernation beforehand

When I was a kid, I was absolutely terrified of the "Yellowstone supervolcano" because so many of my geology professors were convinced that when I exploded, it would kill us all. I kinda needed this, ngl, reminds me that sometimes scientists can jump to the worst conclusions from just a bit of evidence

Thanks to the whole production team ❤❤❤

I love it when you do these particular videos Callie! Being a native Southern Idahoan and Pacific Northwestern, I've always been fascinated on how our dry high plateaus could be so thick. More specifically like the Yellowstone calderas. Always learn something from you! You rock!

The meeting place for the plates isn't always out in the ocean. I live on the Pacific coast of North America, but also on the Pacific plate itself, as do most Southern Californians, because the southern coast of California was an island formed from the mid-oceanic ridge between the growing Pacific plate and the ancient Farallon plate, most of which is now subducted beneath the Americas, except for fragments like the tiny Juan de Fuca, Explorer, Gorda, Cocos, and Nazca Plates along their western coasts.

3:39 looking at that map what really stands out as out of place? You should do a show on the formation of CA's central valley.

1:00 That image shows a series of supervolcanic eruptions in north-central Mexico which were substantially larger than the Yellowstone chain ... that I haven't even heard of.

This is so amazing. Thank you for everyone's effort to bring us this content!

It’s one of the things we like to point out at Mt St Helens. The time of year helped the animals. There was lots of snowpack and ice still, so many animals were underground, and protected by a deep layer of snow. It didn’t save them all, but definitely helped. Also, the animals that did survive helped the plant life recover. Pocket gophers helped bring good soil to the surface, and big game like elk left hoof prints that made areas for seeds being blown by the wind to collect in and take root. The ecosystem around the mountain is thriving, for as much as it’s associated with devastation.

Quite possibly the best educational science host on RU-vid. It's a close race, but the Kallie narrated episodes of eons are fascinating. It's hard to tell if it's in the voice, the writing, or both, but it's really impressive.

Imagine sleeping through a super volcano. LOL amphibians rule.

What a GREAT episode!!!! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 I’ve been to Mt St Helens, the way live rebounds is amazing.

I love discovering something completely new and different 😲 This is one of the great joys of this channel😀 Thanks😊

This was a great video for me. I'm camped at the eastern edge of these ignimbrite deposits. Most of the hills around me are (if I'm reading the geologic maps correctly) part of the Carpenter Ridge Tuff, but there are some exposures of the Fish Canyon Tuff here too. In fact, I have a chunk of the Fish Canyon Tuff sitting by my keyboard right now. Not the prettiest rock I've ever seen, but it's real interesting to hold part of a 28 million year old pyroclastic flow. I'm a sub-academic geology fan, so I've been trying to understand the landscape here, and this video filled in some of the gaps, like how the Farallon Plate's behavior led to this period of volcanism. Good job, PBS Eons!

I don’t know whether to be terrified or relieved just imagining all that ash 😥 This sounds so horrific, calling it a natural disaster is putting it lightly 😅

I have photos of myself with MtStHelens (Loowit) erupting behind me. I have lived in the shadow of Mt.Rainier (Tahoma). I can see Mt.Hood (Wy'East) from my driveway now. The volcanos of North America will never cease to amaze me. Native lands recognition: Cowlitz Tribe.

Interestingly, the subduction of the Farallon plate also led to the formation of the Yellowstone Hotspot. According to Zhou et al. 2018, the Yellowstone hotspot formed because remnants of the Farallon plate got stuck under the North American Plate.

I like how you emphasize the strong resilience of life through adverse conditions. Life endures far more, and is far tougher, than many people give it credit for.

This is a perfect blending of geology and biology! I love PBS eons so much and it is my favorite youtube channel. Thank you so much for all the amazing content!

You are my favorite voice and person on these!

"How do you have this big, cataclysmic event, and no cataclysm?" Easy, take out the -clysm and you're left with a cat

Love the ending. Such high quality content and love when you have fun with it, read off some jokes, or just do Dr. Evil impressions. Fantastic!!! 10/10!!!

I don't catch all of your videos on release but whether they are long or short they are always awesome. Fascinating, varied, and sometimes a little weird, but that keeps your channel fresh.

This is so well told, it's incredible. Also what a wonderful calming voice :)

Fabulous episode. We've been studying this exact subject in my geology class.

Such high quality and interesting presentations. You rock!

When PBS Eons drops a video=🤩! I love learning from you all!💖

Thank you for the content. Great work.

Wow, what a great episode! I live directly adjacent to the rim of the Rosita Hills volcanic complex, so this video was of particular interest. I’d love to see SciShow Rocks do an episode on the Rosita Hills volcanic complex, as apart from publications in the scientific literature, it is difficult to find information about it. Wonderful job as always, PBS Eons! You guys are awesome!

I've been fascinated with the geology of the American West since visiting a couple of times within the last few years, such a beautiful landscape carved by tectonic activity and cataclysmic glacial floods. Good to learn the details of the Eocene eruptions. I visited a petrified forest near Woodland Park, Colorado that resulted from one of these ancient eruptions.

Thank you for your incredible work, your videos are amazing, and very educating! Ciao from Italia

Such a great video. Thank you for all the great work you do

Thanks a lot Farallon Plate for getting all bent out of shape & going all slab rollback 40 to 25 million years ago on the South West US. Now there's a bunch of double digits miles wide potholes in the form of calderas from California to Colorado.

I'm having flashbacks to my community-college Geology 101 course! Yow!

Love these video! Facinating science and geology. I especially like how you explain things I feel like I understand. You're presenters are amazing too! Thanks for doing these videos!

Wow this episode felt especially jam packed with information. Love it.

So beautiful AND inspiring. Thanks.

I love these videos. There’s tons of information, yet the videos are short and sweet. ❤ And this chick is my favorite host.

Eons: 9:25 Earth: Challenge accepted! Eons: No, it wasn't a challenge!!!

I fully second the "great job" compliment by a previous comment, ~11hrs ago. Eons was my 1st vid from.... Complexly?, yes, as do all associates=> great work, great omniscient- bound. ...stuff for investigative minds, from you guys at Eons that led me to finding SciShow. All PBS Studios. Love it like sunshine and hard rock n roll! Thanks and best of wishes EACH - KEEP ON 🌞 KEEPIN' ON! 🤘😎🎸 🎷 ;}~

So my question after seeing this video is: What is the difference between these eruptions and the ones that have caused volcanic winters and/or extinction events? If at least 25 of the eruptions of the Mid-Tertiary Ignimbrite Flare-up were supervolcanic, and the eruption detailed in the beginning of the video was so much more massive than the Yellowstone eruptions, what causes some eruptions to be so much more catastrophic? Like it's mentioned several times in the video that these eruptions don't produce much lava but primarily produce ash - but as far as I've understood, it's ash that causes volcanic winters by blocking out sunlight and forming excessive rain. Mount Tambora's eruption in 1815 isn't even classified as a supervolcano eruption but it caused several years of cooling and a lot of grief. The Late Antique Little Ice Age lasted four years and caused crop failures and famines as well as exacerbating the Justinian Plague. So did the ash from the ignimbrite eruptions just not get high enough into the atmosphere? Is it a composition thing, where the ash only goes high enough in the atmosphere when it's made up of specific elements? Is the difference between this and the extinction events caused by volcanic activity just a matter of scale, with more volcanoes going off at the same time?

Imagine though the fossils under the first 10meters at the bottom..

Thank goodness for insomnia, hehe. First time I'd seen the Fish Canyon Tuff described on the 'Tube, and for sure the first time I'd seen pictures of the region.

Cool! Appreciate the note about indigenous land as well. Well done! 🎉

…gently puke lava….good Lord that’s a sentence! 😂 Thanks for another excellent video 😊

Thank you so much for this information, I had no clue and definitely am gonna have to check out this geological gems in the near future.

Yes!!! I've been waiting for this video!

Hi Kallie, it’s great to see and hear you host another Eons show! I love the work you and everyone else on the channel do, so please keep making more videos!

I love those daily updates on Geology Hub.

PBS has the best channels!! Love EONS❤

I really enjoyed this one. Thank you.

The Mid-Tertiary Ignimbrite Flare-up, also known as "That time the earth forgot its skincare routine"

Very well presented, thanks for sharing

This video is beautifully well made

This was really interesting and informative. Thank you.

I love PBS! I could watch all day

So much enthusiasm in your voice, wow, makes me want to see some supervolcano right now 😛 🌋 Awesome one. Thanks

You guys are really awesome. And I love the lady narrating! Great job, as always guys 👏 ❤❤❤❤❤

Man, it must've been a crazy sight to see with this ancient supervolcano. Amazing video nonetheless. 😊

YES. It has been so hard to find information on geology in this area. I worked in the field of Oil exportation. The starting point for me was Nick Zenter. He works😄 at CWU in Washinton.

Very impressed by this video. Thanks.

Great ep, and really nice bgm!

Great Video. Thank you.

I always think there is water dripping out of the T-Rex mouth in that title card. 1:46

wild! i wanted to go into geology and study volcanoes as a kid and im still really interested now, but ive never heard of Fish Canyon!

"No matter how much ash Earth throws our way" Permian: am I a joke to you?

Hey, I noticed your Jeff Goldblum moment there.

You got my Like when she said the "uh" in the Ian Malcolm Jurassic Park quote.

"Life finds a way" is such a relevant quote that it's hard not to overuse it

"Life, uh, finds a way." Bravo!

I am QUICKLY becoming a fan of Eons! This would have been awesome when I was a kid, but I am very happy it is here now.

Thanks!

I'm glad you think digging out is so easy. I lived 300 miles downwind of Mt. Saint Helens. That ash was terrible. If you tried to sweep it, it just billowed up into clouds that you had to wait to settle out. The fire department would loan out 50' lengths of hose to wash it off with. All that did was create a horrible gooey mass that was very difficult to move, even with a fire hose, and then it gummed up the city drains. A month of driving was the equivalent of 100,000 miles of wear on engines.

You should do a similar video about the valles caldera here in New Mexico! I live here and would really appreciate it. Great video !