Garden of Eden

Description

The Seychelles - tiny little islands, remote location, beautiful coral beaches. Few destinations could hold more allure as prototypical tropical islands.

Yet the allure of the Seychelles for geologists is not their nature as oceanic islands; on the contrary, geologists are fascinated by the Seychelles because they are so very un-oceanic in nature. The Hawaiian and Polynesian islands started life as volcanoes in the middle of the Pacific; Iceland, Bermuda, and the Azores did the same in the Atlantic.

But the Seychelles are not volcanic at heart; they are granitic, and granite is so un-oceanic a rock that its presence virtually defines the existence of a continent. Granite islands in the middle of an ocean?

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