Giant blobs nestled deep in the Earth may influence everything from the structure of island chains to mass-extinction events. If buoyed to the surface, they would be hot enough to cause gigantic, sustained eruptions. In turn, that volcanism could have changed the climate and even led to mass extinctions. Such a sequence, if verified, would be the ultimate antediluvian time bomb — apocalyptic extinctions triggered by subterranean structures buried since the birth of the world.

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