About 16.3 million years ago, the calm of ancient North America was shattered by the eruption of a supervolcano. Along what is now the state line between Oregon and Nevada, thousands of cubic kilometers of magma erupted, collapsing the supervolcano and leaving only a giant hole in the ground.
Now known as the McDermitt caldera, this supervolcano eruption was the work of a hotspot, an unusually hot part of the Earth's mantle.
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