• Question: How old can volcano live

    Asked by anon-190405 to Matt, Liam on 15 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Liam Taylor

      Liam Taylor answered on 15 Nov 2018:

      Volcanoes have their cone shape because of lots and lots of eruptions. When lava comes out of a volcano and cools down, it builds up layers and layers of rock around the main crater. The volcano gradually gets bigger and bigger. So most of the volcanoes that we see and think of as the classic volcano shape are between 10,000 and 100,000 years old. The oldest volcano is probably Mount Etna in Italy. It first started erupting 500,000 years ago and is still erupting regularly today!

    • Photo: Matt Bower

      Matt Bower answered on 18 Nov 2018:

      I think it’s hard to put an age on them. Some volcanoes are very old and haven’t erupted for ages – they’re called “dormant”. We usually don’t know if or when they’ll wake up again….
      If it hasn’t erupted for 10,000 years it gets called extinct.

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