Linear tracks of volcanoes have long been noted on the ocean floor and, to a lesser degree, on continental land surfaces. In the early 1960's, J. Tuzo Wilson interpreted these linear chains of volcanoes to be the result of the earth's lithospheric plates passing over “hotspots” rooted in the mantle. Jason Morgan (1972) took this concept further and suggested one example of a hotspot interacting with a continental plate might be the Yellowstone-Snake River Plain (YSRP) volcanic province. Since then, the concept that a hotspot is responsible for this young (<17 Ma to present) bimodal volcanic province...