> “Tamu Massif is part of an oceanic plateau, situated deep at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, which was believed to have formed following the eruption of a myriad of underwater volcanoes, forming over 130 million years ago.”
That was a shocking time. Much of the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is littered with large volcanoes that formed at roughly the same time. The Earth’s climate must have been shockingly altered. It’s on the boundary between the Hauterivian and Barremian geological periods. Was this a major extinction event?
> “However, the incline of the volcano is incredibly slight. Sager explains that the volcano is by no stretch of the imagination very high, but, rather, it is incredibly wide. Apparently, if you were to stand at the volcano’s flank (the edge of a volcano’s mound) you wouldn’t be able to determine which direction was down hill. Historically, massive quantities of magma oozed from the epicenter of the volcano to form a broad surface, which set to form a shape similar to that of a shield.”
I wonder how that compares with other “flood basalt” events such as the Siberian and Deccan Traps.
“The Deccan Traps are a large igneous province located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India and one of the largest volcanic features on Earth. They consist of multiple layers of solidified flood basalt that together are more than 2,000 m (6,562 ft) thick and cover an area of 500,000 km^2 (193,051 sq mi) and a volume of 512,000 km^3 (123,000 cu mi).”
New Mexico is 300,000 km^2 so, sorry, Tamu Massif is not the largest volcano on Earth. The Deccan Traps are more recent than Tamu Massif, having been formed 65 million years ago.
The Siberian Traps are even bigger, initially covering 7 million km^2. The original volume of lava is estimated to range from 1 million to 4 million km^3. At 250 million years ago, and is cited as the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction.
