Late Pleistocene desiccation of Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile

This work revealed that the Northern Ethiopian Highlands have a composite volcanic history that records the development of two temporally distinct flood basalt piles (an older one at +3i Myr and a younger one at ca. 28 Myr) separated by a short-lived episode (<1 Myr) of intense felsic volcanism. The implications are that Lake Tana might be the exhumed cauldera of an enormous explosive volcano (geophysical surveys reveal the Lake to contain >>100m of sedimentary infill). Ongoing work is testing the linkages (or lack thereof) between these volcanic events and the global climatic decline that marks this period in Earth history (the late Eocene through Oligocene).