testmeat photoblog

i knew that the galapagos were famous for cool creatures and contradicting creationism - but before i travelled to there i didn't really know so much about the islands themselves. the more that i read and learned, the more i realised that this was equally as fascinating. underneath the islands is a hotspot of magma which rises and pushes the earth's crust up to create volcanoes - eventually these volcanoes rise up above sea level to become islands. while the hotspot doesn't move, the tectonic plates above it do, which means as each island is formed it essentially moves out of the way to allow the next one to take its place. and in geological terms this all happens pretty fast, the oldest island is thought to be 3.3 million years old while the youngest around 500,000 years old. it's a cool little factory line of creation, with islands being born from volcanic eruption, moving along a tectonic conveyor belt away from hotspot before dying as they slowly erode into the ocean. yeah science!

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