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Mount Takahe

Volcanic Formations

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Mount Takahe is a snow-covered shield volcano in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica, standing 3,460 meters high about 200 kilometers from the Amundsen Sea, with a summit caldera roughly 8 kilometers wide. It is built mainly from trachytic lava flows, along with hyaloclastite and pillow lava formed where lava interacted directly with ice, and its total volume above the surrounding ice surface is estimated at about 780 cubic kilometers. The volcano grew unusually fast: rock from its summit caldera dates to about 192,000 years ago, meaning the entire edifice may have reached its present height within roughly 200,000 years. It is one of at least 19 known volcanoes in the West Antarctic Rift System, carries parasitic vents and cinder cones on its lower flanks, and is thought to sit above a large magma chamber, though it is currently dormant, having last erupted around 5550 BC. This entity documents Mount Takahe specifically as a geological formation, a rapidly built shield volcano within the West Antarctic Rift System.

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