In the Aegean Sea, around the Greek island of Santorini, traces of a mega-eruption that occurred around 520,000 years ago have been found.
The volcanic deposits left by the event, which was explosive, occupy over 90 cubic kilometers and are more than 150 meters thick: this makes them six times larger than those left by the eruption that destroyed the Minoan civilization of Crete between 1627 and 1600 BC, and ten times larger than the Hunga Tonga attack that occurred in 2022 in the Pacific Ocean, considered the most violent of the 21st century.
The discovery comes from the study led by the French University of Clermont-Auvergne and published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
The volcanic area located in the Aegean Sea near Greece consists of a 60 kilometer long chain of more than 20 volcanoes, most of them submerged.
It is considered particularly dangerous because these volcanoes have a long history of eruptions, some of which are highly explosive, although researchers agree that it is very unlikely that another eruption of this magnitude will occur in the near future.
The authors of the study led by Tim Druitt used various methods, including the analysis of the microfossils present for accurate dating and electron beams to understand the chemical composition of the deposits, in order to decipher the eruption and its dimensions .
The results show that the area around Santorini was once much more explosive than previously thought.
Another similar event is highly unlikely, but – as Steffen Kutterolf of the German research institute Geomar, co-author of the study, states – “Knowing the past is an essential element for predicting the future”.
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