History Of The Earth

As the name implies, mud volcanoes are eruptions of mud – not molten rock as in igneous volcanoes.  They’re found all around the world, amounting to about a thousand in total number known. The one thing they have in common is hot or at least warm water, so they occur in geothermal areas especially, but they also are found in the Arctic.They range in size from tiny, just a few meters across and high, to big things that can cover several square miles. In Azerbaijan some mud volcanoes reach 200 meters, 650 feet, in height, and around the world many of them do have conical, volcano-like shapes. But there are others that are just low mounds, more like a shield volcano. A little (15-cm) mud volcano in New Zealand. Photo by Richard Gibson.The mud is often enough just a slurry of suspended fine-grained sediment that mixes with the hot water. And by hot water, we don’t necessarily mean incredibly hot – mud volcano temperatures as cold as a couple degrees Centigrade are known, but most are associated with tempera