The SCLIP covered an area of at least 0.5×10^6 km2 (0.19×10^6 sq mi) and includes the Oslo and Skagerrak
grabens, areas in south-western Sweden, Scotland, northern England, and the central North Sea. The SCLIP erupted at 297±4 Ma.[3]
It produced 228,000 km2 of currently exposed volcanic material that can be found in Skagerrak, the Oslo Fjord, central North Sea, North-east Germany; 14,000 km2 of
sills in Scotland, England, Germany, The Netherlands, and Sweden; and 3,353 km total length of
dykes in Scotland, Norway, and Sweden.[4]
The period of eruptions comprised a relatively short time span, perhaps less than 4 Ma, but magma propagated more than 1,000 km (620 mi) from the plume centre.[5]
Plumes derived from a
superplume (or Large Low Shear Velocity Province (LLSVP)) overlay the boundary of the superplume at the
core-mantle boundary (CMB).[6] To test whether the SCLIP met these criteria, Torsvik et al. used a shear-wave
tomographic model of the mantle, in which the SCLIP indeed do project down to the margin of the African superplume at the CMB at a depth of 2800 km.[2]
A series of LIPs are associated with the African superplume, of which the SCLIP is the oldest: SCLIP (300 Ma),
Bachu (275 Ma),
Emeishan (260 Ma),
Siberian (250 Ma), and
Central Atlantic (200 Ma). Its possible that these plumes together caused the break-up of
Pangaea and therefore play an important role in the
supercontinent cycle.[7]