The Quill volcano, Netherlands Antilles
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The Quill volcano, Netherlands Antilles
The Quill stratovolcano (center) forms the SE end of Statia (St. Eustatius) Island.
Pleistocene volcanic rocks form the hill at the lower left, and Mount Liamuiga volcano on St. Kitts (St. Christopher) Island rises across the strait at the right center.
A steep-sided 760-m-wide crater truncates the summit of The Quill, which was formed about 32,000-22,000 years ago by rhyolitic eruptions on a shallow-water limestone bank.
Pyroclastic-flow and -surge deposits, the last of which were erupted about 400 AD, blanket the slopes of the volcano.
The Quill is a large dominantly andesitic stratovolcano that forms the SE end of St. Eustatius (Statia) Island.
The 601-m-high volcano was formed about 32,000-22,000 years ago by rhyolitic eruptions on a shallow-water limestone bank 3 km offshore of an older 0.2 million years old volcanic center exposed at the NW end of the island.
The interaction of rhyolitic magma with sea water produced pyroclastic-surge deposits, rich in limestone fragments, that joined the two islands and blanket the entire slopes of The Quill.
The surges also swept across the older island and incorporated carbonized plant remains, shell fragments, and remains of fossil hermit crabs. A likely cryptodome tilted up limestones at Sugarloaf on the southern coast.
A steep-sided crater, 760 m wide and more than 300 m deep caps The Quill; a notch on the western rim of the crater has directed the youngest pyroclastic flows towards the island's capital, Orangestad.
The last dated eruption of The Quill produced pyroclastic flows about 1600 years ago.
PHOTO SOURCE: Photo by John Shepherd, 2000 (Seismic Research Unit, University of West Indies), courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Global Volcanism Program, used with permission.
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