Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
4681689 Geoscience Frontiers 2014 9 Pages PDF
Abstract

•There is often a causal link between continental flood basalts climates and mass extinctions.•Development of palaeosols in most of the flood basalts represents inter-eruptive time intervals.•These paleosols can help in understanding environmental developments during volcanic activity.

Since continental sediments (in addition to the marine geological record) offer important means of deciphering environmental changes, the sediments hosted by the successive flows of the continental flood basalt provinces of the world should be treasure houses in gathering the palaeoclimatic data. Palaeosols developed on top of basalt flows are potentially ideal for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions because it is easy to determine their protolith geochemistry and also they define a definite time interval. The present paper summarizes the nature of the basalt-hosted palaeosols formed on the flood basalts provinces from different parts of the globe having different ages.

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Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Earth and Planetary Sciences Earth and Planetary Sciences (General)
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