Tungurahua Volcano

Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano (satellite map)—seen here from the town of Cotalo—shot truck-size boulders nearly a mile (1.6 kilometers) away Friday, prompting the evacuation of at least 300 people, according to the Associated Press.

Tungurahua—”throat of fire” in the indigenous Quechua language—sits high in the Andes mountains, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Quito, Ecuador’s densely populated capital.

Eruptions are nothing new for the 16,500-foot (5,000-meter) volcano, which roared back to life in 1999 after nearly 80 years of dormancy.

Japan’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite, or GOSAT, captured an image of the Kirishima plume on Wednesday, before the increase in activity that prompted the call for evacuations.

Built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the GOSAT spacecraft measures concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane, two major greenhouse gases. The false-color picture shows the volcano’s plume spreading southeast.

Catastrophic volcanic eruptions in Europe may have culled Neanderthals to the point where they couldn’t bounce back, according to a controversial new theory.

About 40,000 years ago in what we now call Italy and the Caucasus Mountains, which straddle Europe and Asia, several volcanoes erupted in quick succession, according to a new study to be published in the October issue of the journal Current Anthropology.

It’s likely the eruptions reduced or wiped out local bands of Neanderthals and indirectly affected farther-flung populations, the team concluded after analyzing pollen and ash from the affected area.

A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet’s surface or crust, which allows hot magma, ash and gases to escape from below the surface.

The word volcano is derived from the name of Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn originates from Vulcan, the name of a god of fire in Roman mythology. The study of volcanoes is called volcanology, sometimes spelled vulcanology.

Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together.