Our Volcanic Origins

Volcanoes Shape our Environment

The eruption of Taupo volcano about 200 AD was considered the world’s largest in 7000 years, blowing a hole in the middle of the North Island as big as Singapore. The fall out overshadowed two empires. So much ash and debris blasted into the sky that historians in both China and Rome noted darkened skies and unusually red sunsets.

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But New Zealand’s volcanic influences go back even further. Although part of the ancient Gondwana super continent, New Zealand has been adrift and isolated as a volcanic raft for 60 to 80 million years - so long that most animals never reached its shores. [ more about New Zealand's volcanic fauna]  Until the first people arrived in New Zealand 700 to 1,000 years ago, the country’s forests had no mammals apart from bats. Protected by isolation and volatility, New Zealand became a land of giant insects, and large, often flightless, birds.