#alien planet

Imara, chilling in the rocky desert

80 million years ago (for refrence, this is as long ago as the late cretaceous was for us) this island used to be home to the world's largest volcano, a massive mountain bigger than our mount everest and potentially could have been seen from space. Most of this mountain and it's surroumding peaks stood over the lake that remains there today. This continent was once connected to the two neighboring continents and the smaller islands nearby (many not visible on map due to small size and my lack of forethought when making the map).

80 million years ago there was a catastrophic event where a large meteorite was pulled into this massive planet's gravital orbit as it flew too close, and instead of crashing to the surface of the planet it collided hard with one of the planets eight moons that was roughly the same size as it. This event then caused chunks of both the moon and the comet to rain violently down onto the surface of the planet, many of which collided with the super volcano causing a devastating eruption. This caused violent quakes that separated many continents and islands, even sinking some bodies of land beneath the surface.

This massive eruption combined with the many chunks of celestial bodies that rained down into the ground created one of the most devastating extinction events this world has ever known. This is also it's most recent extinction event, almost wiping out 80% of the life on the planet; launching ash, radiation, and lava high enough to break through the atmosphere of the planet and block out the sun for up to 100 years.

Today, 80 million years later the large lake at the center of this continent is a large, toxic, sulphuric lake with many surrounding calderas, and only the toughest of lifeforms live there. While the planet has mostly recovered from the lunar-volcanic extinction, it's impact is still felt today with how the world evolved to recover from it. Previously subterranean creatures ventured to the surfact where they could now exist, their descendants now having working eyes and being able to withstand sunlight while still holding onto many Previous subterranean traits. Niches that were emptied by the extinction were then filled by other creatures that still fill those niches today. While the world is still very bio-diverse to this day, it's diversity is still not even half of what it was before tbh extinction event— the previous era begin 270 million years long without a major extinction event.