Siberian Traps, Russia

http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Permian/SiberianTraps.html

The Siberian Traps were the largest volcanic eruption in Earth history and they occured right at the same time as the largest extinction event in Earth history.

The Siberian Traps form a large igneous province in Siberia. The massive eruptive event spans the Permian-Triassic boundary, about 251 to 250 million years ago, and was essentially coincident with the Permian-Triassic extinction event in what was one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history. The term 'traps' is derived from the Swedish word for stairs (trappa, or sometimes trapp), referring to the step-like hills forming the landscape of the region. Vast volumes of basaltic lava paved over a large expanse of primeval Siberia in a flood basalt event.

 Today the area covered is about 2 million km(squared} and estimates of the original coverage are as high as 7 million km(squared}. The original volume of lava is estimated to range from 1 to 4 million km³. The area covered lies between 50 and 75 degrees north latitude and 60 to 120 degrees east longitude. The volcanism continued for a million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic boundary.

Credit: NASA, The Discovery Channel, The Smithsonian Institute, USGS