New Hebrides

History

The past. At the ice age peak the sea stood about 120 metres lower, and some 4,000 square kilometres of reef and shallow shelf around these islands were dry land, enough to join Ambrym, Paama and Epi into one island; the islands have been rising ever since, Malakula by about 3.5 metres every thousand years after the ice age, so the true area was likely smaller. No ice reached them, but the sea off Santo was about 4.5 degrees cooler than today in a cold spell about 12,000 years ago, and the rising sea drowned most of the shallows between about 16,000 and 8,000 years ago. People arrived only about 3,000 years ago, and the last horned turtles there vanished soon after.

12 million years ago

The North Fiji Basin began to open behind this plate's volcanic arc.

10 million years ago

Subduction here flipped direction, and the Australian plate began to sink beneath this arc.

Sources: Lambeck et al. 2014, PNAS 111:15296; Taylor et al. 1980, Journal of Geophysical Research 85:5367; Taylor et al. 1985, Journal of Geology 93:419; Prentice et al. 2005, Quaternary International 138-139:93; Green et al. 2022, Climate of the Past 18:845; Corrège et al. 2004, Nature 428:927; Petchey et al. 2015, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 4:95; White et al. 2010, PNAS 107:15512 · Crameri et al. 2020, Nature Communications 11:3750 · Schellart, Lister and Toy 2006, Earth-Science Reviews 76:191