Ash from the Toba supereruption in Lake Malawi shows no volcanic winter in East Africa at 75 ka.

ABSTRACT: The most explosive volcanic event of the Quaternary was the eruption of Mt. Toba, Sumatra, 75,000 y ago, which produced voluminous ash deposits found across much of the Indian Ocean, Indian Peninsula, and South China Sea. A major climatic downturn observed within the Greenland ice cores has been attributed to the cooling effects of the ash and aerosols ejected during the eruption of the Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT). These events coincided roughly with a hypothesized human genetic bottleneck, when the number of our species in Africa may have been reduced to near extinction. Some have speculated that the demise of early modern humans at that time was due in part to a dramatic climate shift triggered by the supereruption. Others have argued that environmental conditions would not have been so sev

SUBMITTER: Lane CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3657767 | biostudies-literature | 2013 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature