
Manila – The world’s largest caldera, known as “Apolaki” was discovered by a Filipina geologist – Jenny Anne Barretto.
She discovered the caldera in 2014 while randomly researching and literally zooming out the graphs of a large impact crater east of Luzon with a diameter of 150 kilometers (93 mi) located within the Benham Rise (Philippine Rise).
Baretto said she named the caldera “Apolaki”, which means “giant lord” in Filipino, and is also the name A caldera is a large volcanic crater formed by a major eruption leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano.
of the god of sun and war in Philippine mythology and folklore.
In an interview, she narrated that since the discovery of the Apolaki caldera, there was never a volcanic crater bigger than the Yellowstone located in Yellowstone National Park in the Western United States, which is 60 kilometers wide.
Barretto, along with Ray Wood and John Milsom, co-authored a paper published it in 2019 in the journal Marine Geology and described the history of the formation and structure of Philippine Rise.
According to their research, its last possible eruption was around 25 million years ago.
Currently, Barretto is working for GNS Science in New Zealand and she is also a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Geological Society of the Philippines.