Snake River Plain
The eastern Snake River Plain is a topographic depression that cuts across Basin and Range Mountain structures, more or less parallel to North American plate motion. Beneath more recent basalts are rhyolite lavas and ignimbrites that erupted as the lithosphere passed over the hotspot. Younger volcanoes that erupted after passing over the hotspot covered the plain with young basalt lava flows in places, including Craters of the Moon National Monument.
The central Snake River plain is similar to the eastern plain, but differs by having thick sections of interbedded lacustrine (lake) and fluvial (stream) sediments, including the Hagerman Fossil Beds.
Read more about this topic: Yellowstone Hotspot
Famous quotes containing the words snake, river and/or plain:
“Even in a bamboo tube, a snake still wants to wiggle.”
—Chinese proverb.
“There is a great river this side of Stygia,”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.”
—Bible: Hebrew Jacob, in Genesis, 27:11.
To his mother Rebekah, explaining how the blind Isaac might discover the ploy of his pretending to be Esau. “Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.” (25:27)