The subsequent breakup of Pangaea created the Atlantic Ocean, but the massive igneous upwelling provided a legacy of basaltic dikes, sills, and lavas now spread over a vast area around the present central North Atlantic Ocean, including large deposits in northwest Africa, southwest Europe, as well as northeast South America and southeast North America (found as continental tholeiitic basalts in subaerial flows and intrusive bodies).

[4] The basaltic sills of similar age (near 200 Ma, or earliest Jurassic) and composition (intermediate-Ti quartz tholeiite) which occur across the vast Amazon River basin of Brazil were linked to the province in 1999.

Nearly all CAMP rocks are tholeiitic in composition, with widely separated areas where basalt flows are preserved, as well as large groups of diabase (dolerite) sills or sheets, small lopoliths, and dikes throughout the province.

The work by Blackburn et al. demonstrated a tight synchroneity between the earliest volcanism and extinction of large populations using zircon uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating.

One hypothesis was based especially on studies on Triassic-Jurassic basins from Morocco where CAMP lava flows are outcropping,[8] whereas the other was based on end-Triassic extinction data from eastern North American basins and lava flows showing an extremely large turnover in fossil pollen, spores (sporomorphs), and vertebrates,[9] respectively.

One limestone bed from the top to the central High Atlas upper basalts yielded a Late Triassic palynological assemblage.

All of these data indicate that the basaltic lava flows of the Central Atlantic magmatic province in Morocco were erupted at c. 200 Ma and spanned the Tr-J boundary.

The CAMP is here constituted by rare olivine- and common quartz-normative basalts showing a great lateral extension and a maximum thickness up to 1 km.

40Ar/39Ar data (on plagioclase) indicate for these basaltic units an absolute age of 198–200 Ma[13] bringing this magmatic event undoubtedly close to the Triassic-Jurassic (Tr-J) boundary.

In the Newark Basin, a magnetic reversal (E23r) is observed just below the oldest basalts and more or less in the same position as a palynologic turnover, interpreted as the Tr-J boundary.

Marzoli et al. (2004) suggest that the Tr-J boundary is located above the lower reverse polarity level which is positioned more or less at the base of the Intermediate basalt unit of Morocco.

Whiteside et al. (2007) suggest that reverse polarity intervals in this dike could be of post Triassic age and correlated with the same events in Morocco.

In the Newark basin the palynological turnover event (hence the Tr-J boundary mass extinction) occurs below the oldest CAMP lava flows.