Deccan Traps

The Deccan Traps are a vast flood basalt province in west-central India, between roughly 17 and 24 degrees north latitude, with lava flows covering about 500,000 square kilometers today, though the original extent may have reached 1.5 million square kilometers, and a total erupted volume estimated around 1 million cubic kilometers. The rock is at least 95 percent tholeiitic basalt, made up mainly of olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase minerals, cut by widespread faulting and dikes. Eruptions occurred between about 66.3 and 65.6 million years ago, spanning the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, with the bulk of the lava erupted in a single pulse lasting less than 30,000 years. The eruptions are generally attributed to a deep mantle plume, the Réunion hotspot, which remains active today beneath the Mascarene Islands. Because their eruption coincided closely with the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, the Deccan Traps were once proposed as its main cause; the current scientific consensus instead holds that the Chicxulub asteroid impact was the primary trigger, with some research suggesting the volcanism may even have partly offset the impact's effects. This entity documents the Deccan Traps specifically as a geological formation built by flood-basalt volcanism.