Dunedin volcanic group

The Dunedin volcanic group is a volcanic group that covers over 7,800 km² (3,000 sq mi) of Otago in the South Island of New Zealand. It is a recent reclassification of the group previously known as the Waiareka-Deborah volcanic field due to common magma melt ancestries of the Dunedin Volcano with the overlapping alkali basaltic monogenetic volcanic field. Excluded from the group are a group of volcanics of different composition (sub-alkaline basalt to basaltic andesite) and older age (36.4 to 27.6 million years ago) near Oamaru, which have been given the name previously used for the Dunedin group. The older Waiareka-Deborah volcanic field overlaps the new Dunedin volcanic group geographically; though Dunedin Volcano has been well studied from the 1880s since New Zealand's first school of geology was established at the University of Otago, detailed studies of north-central volcanoes such as the Crater near Middlemarch were done much later, and high-quality composition studies still need to be done to properly classify many volcanics near Oamaru.