Komatiite / Коматииты

The time traveller was becoming despondent. Here she was, 2.7 billion years back in time, and she had spent most of the day flying over a flat, featureless plane. True, some hours back, she had passed over a chain of fiery stratovolcanoes strung out along the margin of the continent, no doubt marking the trace of an active subduction zone. She had marvelled at the spectacle of the thick mat of floating pumice blanketing a vast area of blue-green sea. There was a long mountain range with lofty snow-covered peaks. Imposing, yes, but duller than modern mountains because of their total lack of vegetation. But now all she saw was this dreary plain, feebly lit by a pale yellow sun glinting in the reddish sky. She’d seen it all before, this enormous flow of basaltic lava, so like the flat, monotonous uppermost flows of the Deccan plateau. 

Then, far to the north, she saw a small plume of rising vapour. The plume was not large but, as she got closer, she saw in the dull twilight that it was illuminated from below, as if by a powerful flickering searchlight. She reached the plume, circled slowly around it, and realized that she was witnessing, for the very first time, an eruption of komatiite <...>