Lithium discovery in U.S. volcano could be biggest deposit ever found

[u/Sort_of_Frightening]

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/lithium-discovery-in-us-volcano-could-be-biggest-deposit-ever-found/4018032.article

[u/Razgriz01]

Craters of the moon is a vastly more recent eruption than even the last big yellowstone eruption. It's only a few thousand years old, vs a few hundred thousand for yellowstone and tens of millions for the hotspot eruptions that created the snake river plain where craters of the moon is.

[u/MaxTHC → u/Razgriz01]

That's weird, cause I was paraphrasing what I remember reading at the Craters of the Moon visitor's center, I don't remember all the details but it definitely said there that it had been formed by what is currently the Yellowstone hotspot.

Edit: Wikipedia tells me that neither of us are really wrong. Apparently, Craters of the Moon was formed by more recent lava flows, which in turn are ultimately a result of the Yellowstone hotspot having passed through the area long before:

The Snake River Plain is a volcanic province that was created by a series of cataclysmic caldera-forming eruptions which started about 15 million years ago. A migrating hotspot thought to now exist under Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park [...] was under the Craters of the Moon area some 10 to 11 million years ago but 'moved' as the North American Plate migrated northwestward.

Leftover heat from this hot spot was later liberated by Basin and Range-associated rifting and created the many overlapping lava flows that make up the Lava Beds of Idaho. The largest rift zone is the Great Rift; it is from this 'Great Rift fissure system' that Craters of the Moon, Kings Bowl, and Wapi lava fields were created.

In spite of their fresh appearance, the oldest flows in the Craters of the Moon Lava Field are 15,000 years old and the youngest erupted about 2000 years ago [...] the volcanic fissures at Craters of the Moon are considered to be dormant, not extinct, and are expected to erupt again in less than a thousand years.

So not extinct but it does seem to be a leftover from the movement of what is now the Yellowstone hotspot.

[u/Razgriz01 → u/MaxTHC]

I believe it would be more accurate to say that the passage of the hotspot underneath the crust (and the eruptions that resulted) left weaknesses that made it easier for magma to penetrate to the surface even after the hotspot moved on. Craters of the moon itself isn't from a Yellowstone eruption, even though the hotspot is ultimately responsible.

The entire Snake River plain cutting through southern Idaho marks the passage of the hotspot, the mountains to the north and south used to be continuous with each other, but the hotspot eruptions completely flattened a path through them.