A flood basalt (or plateau basalt) is the result of a giant volcanic eruption or series of eruptions that covers large stretches of land or the ocean floor with basalt lava. Many flood basalts have been attributed to the onset of a hotspot reaching the surface of the earth via a mantle plume. Flood basalt provinces such as the Deccan Traps of India are often called traps, after the Swedish word trappa (meaning "staircase"), due to the characteristic stairstep geomorphology of many associated landscapes. Michael R. Rampino and Richard Stothers (1988) cited eleven distinct flood basalt episodes occurring in the past 250 million years, creating large igneous provinces, lava plateaus, and mountain ranges. However, more have been recognized such as the large Ontong Java Plateau, and the Chilcotin Group, though the latter may be linked to the Columbia River Basalt Group. Large igneous provinces have been connected to five mass extinction events, and may be associated with bolide impacts. Flood basalts are the most voluminous of all extrusive igneous rocks, forming enormous deposits of basaltic rock found throughout the geologic record. They are a highly distinctive form of intraplate volcanism, set apart from all other forms of volcanism by the huge volumes of lava erupted in geologically short time intervals. A single flood basalt province may contain hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometers of basalt erupted over less than a million years, with individual events each erupting hundreds of cubic kilometers of basalt. This highly fluid basalt lava can spread laterally for hundreds of kilometers from its source vents, covering areas of tens of thousands of square kilometers. Successive eruptions form thick accumulations of nearly horizontal flows, erupted in rapid succession over vast areas, flooding the Earth's surface with lava on a regional scale. These vast accumulations of flood basalt constitute large igneous provinces. These are characterized by plateau landforms, so that flood basalts are also described as plateau basalts.

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Lava
Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a fracture in the crust, on land or underwater, usually at temperatures from . The volcanic rock resulting from subsequent cooling is also often called lava. A lava flow is an outpouring of lava during an effusive eruption. (An explosive eruption, by contrast, produces a mixture of volcanic ash and other fragments called tephra, not lava flows.
Siberian Traps
The Siberian Traps (Sibirskiye trappy) is a large region of volcanic rock, known as a large igneous province, in Siberia, Russia. The massive eruptive event that formed the traps is one of the largest known volcanic events in the last 500 million years. The eruptions continued for roughly two million years and spanned the Permian–Triassic boundary, or P–T boundary, which occurred around 251.9 million years ago. The Siberian Traps are believed to be the primary cause of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the most severe extinction event in the geologic record.
Gondwana
Gondwana (pronɡɒndˈwɑːnə) was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent. It was formed by the accretion of several cratons (a large stable block of the earth's crust), beginning with the East African Orogeny, the collision of India and Madagascar with East Africa, and was completed with the overlapping Brasiliano and Kuunga orogenies, the collision of South America with Africa, and the addition of Australia and Antarctica, respectively.
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