Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Seven centimeters per year

Ms. Barrett,
I have found some information on the webpage of http://www.galapagos-islands-tourguide.com/galapagos-islands-volcanos.html. Some of it answers Daniel's questions.

Apparently, all of the islands have different ages. The oldest ones, such as Espanola, Florena, and Santa Fe are in the four to five million year range. There are also multiple islands that are two or three million years old, such as Santiago or Bartolome. The youngest ones were created about one million years ago. On this same website, I also discovered that the plate under the Galapagos helps the archipelago move seven centimeters a year.

Sincerely,
Cara (whom hails from period 1)

Good, Cara. Did you get the name of the plate and the direction in which it is moving? And if the islands are moving east at seven cm/year, when will they hit South America?!