CAMP, or the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, was formed during the largest known volcanic event in Earth history. Here is a summary by J. Gregory McHone. The initial breakup of Pangaea in Early Jurassic time provided a legacy of basaltic dikes, sills, and lavas over a vast area around the present central North Atlantic Ocean. Although some connections among these basalts had long been recognized, Rampino and Stothers [1988] were possibly the first to recognize that they constitute a single major flood basalt province. Marzoli et al. [1999] showed that basaltic sills of similar age (near 200 Ma, or earliest Jurassic) and composition (intermediate-Ti quartz tholeiite) also occur across the vast Amazon River basin of Brazil, and they proposed the acronym of CAMP (Central Atlantic Magmatic Province). The province has been described by McHone [2000] as extending within Pangaea from present-day central Brazil northeastward about 5000 km across western Africa, Iberia, and northwestern France, and from the interior of western Africa westward for 2500 km through eastern and southern North America. If perhaps not the largest by volume, the CAMP certainly encompasses the greatest area known – roughly 11 million km2 -- of any continental large igneous province. Nearly all CAMP rocks are tholeiitic in composition, with widely separated areas where basalt flows are preserved, and many large groups of diabase (dolerite) sills or sheets, small lopoliths, and dikes throughout the province. CAMP activity is apparently related to the breakup of Pangaea in the lower Mesozoic Era, and the enormous province size, varieties of basalt, and brief time span of CAMP magmatism invite speculation about mantle processes that could produce such a magmatic event, as well as rift a supercontinent [Wilson, 1997; McHone, 2000].

Citations:

Marzoli, A., P.R. Renne, E.M. Piccirillo, M. Ernesto, G. Bellieni, and A. De Min, Extensive 200 million-year-old continental flood basalts of the central Atlantic magmatic province: Science, 284, 616-618, 1999.

McHone J.G., Non-plume magmatism and rifting during the opening of the Central Atlantic Ocean: Tectonophysics, 316, 287-296, 2000.

Rampino, M.R., and R.B. Stothers, R.B., Flood basalt volcanism during the past 250 million years: Science, 241, 663-668, 1988.