Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park — page 5
Yellowstone National Park T o look at Yellowstone National Park today with its mature forests and imposing mountain ranges it’s hard to imagine the region ever being new But until 2 1 million years ago the entire area was beneath an expansive shallow sea Then the first of three major volcanic events took place Hundreds of cubic miles of ash and volcanic rock erupted from the seabed raising the land above the sea About one million years later lesser but still immensely powerful eruptions further altered the landscape The last major volcanic explosion occurred at Yellowstone about 640,000 years ago Scientists believe it was an enormous blast up to 100 times more powerful than the eruption that blew the top off Washington’s Mount St Helens in 1980 The eruption cracked the earth’s crust and vast amounts of ash and rock once again poured out giving shape to the landforms visible in Yellowstone today Yellowstone’s volcanic past is still evident Within the current Sitting atop a volcano Yellowstone is a land of steam with water heated underground creating various forms of hot springs