Eli5: I understand that 74,000 years ago a supereruption occurred in the Toba volcano that reduced the human population and many other animal species to near extinction. What exactly happened after the eruption that was so deadly for living things?

Question

A super eruption on the Toba volcano produced a bottleneck in the human and in many animal species. How could it be that the eruption of a volcano almost wiped out many animal species?

In: 249

Answer 1

[No such population bottleneck happened](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618220303335), and the climate impact of the volcano [was “negligible”](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590056022000044).

The Toba population bottleneck is a 30 year old theory based off the very earliest days of ancient DNA research, and is now known to be false. We’re about ten years behind the science when we talk about this theory.