Windows into the Earth

Millions of years ago, the North American continent was dragged over the world''s largest continental hotspot, a huge column of hot and molten rock rising from the Earth''s interior that traced a 50-mile wide, 500-mile-long path northeastward across Idaho. Generating cataclysmic volcanic eruptions and large earthquakes, the hotspot helped lift the Yellowstone Plateau to more than 7,000 feet and pu...