At the very end of the Triassic, 201 million years ago, the world was violently remade. For 40 million years, Pangea had been gradually splintering apart, and magma had been welling underground. Now that the supercontinent had finally cracked, the magma had somewhere to go. Like a hot-air balloon rising through the sky, the liquid-rock reservoir rushed upward, broke through the shattered surface of Pangea, and gushed out onto the land.
