A Filipino marine geophysicist has discovered what could be the largest known caldera in the world in the Philippine Rise, formerly known as Benham Rise.
Jenny Anne Barretto, along with Ray Wood and John Milson, found a caldera — a volcanic feature that forms when a volcano collapses on itself — with a diameter of around 150 kilometers in the undersea feature which is part of the Philippines’ continental shelf.
Barretto and the other researchers named it the “Apolaki Caldera,” after the Filipino mythical god of the sun and war.
“For comparison, Earth's largest calderas, like the Yellowstone, is only about 60 kilometers (km). The size is comparable to shield calderas in Mars (Olympus Mons; 80 km x 65 km) and Venus (Sacajawea; 150 X 105 km),” the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute said Monday in a Facebook post.
The discovery of the Apolaki Caldera is among the findings made by Barreto, Wood and Milson in their research on the Philippine Rise. Their study also revealed the structure of the undersea feature for the first time.
The paper titled “Benham Rise unveiled: Morphology and structure of an Eocene large igneous province in the West Philippine Basin” will be published in the journal Marine Geology.
Source: CNN Philippines
