New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

A collection of giant calderas ("super volcanoes") from the beginning of New Mexico's "Age of Volcanoes".

Rhyolite, quartz latite

These are older volcanoes and volcanic rocks dating from the Neogene.  They represent part of the great ignimbrite flare-up that occurred throughout the Southwest at this time.  Many of these eruptions resulted in large calderas similar to the modern Vallis Caldera.  However, 20 to 35 million years of erosion and faulting have erased most of the morphology of large calderas.  Today this area is dominated by masssive cliffs of ash flow tuffs and exposures of shallow batholiths consisting of granitic and intermediate volcanic rocks.°

CROSS SECTION OF THE STATE OF PRESERVATION FOR AN IDEALIZED DATL-MOGOLLON VOLCANIC FIELD SUPER VOLCANO:

View Datl-Mogollon Volcanic Field in a larger map

http://nmnaturalhistory.org/manager

Return to Volcano Directory