Yellowstone’s Last Eruption Was Sooner Than Thought

It was previously thought that Wyoming's Yellowstone volcano had not erupted in 70,000 years.

However, new evidence has found a younger lava flow half that age in an unexpected location, not so far outside of Yellowstone's youngest caldera.

This video will discuss this recently discovered 1 square mile basaltic lava flow, which is termed the Pinedale Basalt Flow, through the analysis of a geologist.

The youngest known eruption at Yellowstone National Park is now understood to be a basalt flow from the Pinedale basalt in the Henrys Fork Caldera region, dating back 35,000 years.

This revised timeline replaces the previously held belief that the youngest eruption was the rhyolite lava of the Pitchstone Plateau, about 70,000 years old. (USGS).

 

Kenneth Sims and other research scientists recently discovered that mafic volcanism of Henrys Fork Caldera -- located in eastern Idaho and west of Yellowstone National Park -- occurred concurrently with second- and third-cycle rhyolite volcanism in and around the Yellowstone caldera.

“Essentially, it changes our understanding of the Yellowstone magmatic system by showing how basaltic eruptions have ‘thermally primed’ Yellowstone's big caldera-forming eruptions and shows that there are some very young eruptions in the Henrys Fork Caldera,” says Sims, a University of Wyoming professor of geology and geophysics and a member of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

This story can get rather technical.

You can read the details at the University of Wyoming's website, along with information from the USGS.

Despite what some internet posts claim, there is no chance that anything is Yellowstone will erupt anytime soon.

Certainly not in your lifetime.