Oceanic tectonic islands

The origin of oceanic islands has been the subject of much speculation, starting with Darwin almost two centuries ago. Two classes of oceanic islands can be identified: ‘volcanic islands’, which form due to excess volcanism caused by melt- ing anomalies in the suboceanic mantle, and ‘tectonic islands’, which form due to transpressive and/or transten- sional tectonics of blocks of oceanic lithosphere along trans- form faults. Modern and sunken tectonic islands from the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea and Red Sea expose mantle and lower crust lithologies and display an elongated narrow morphology; in contrast, volcanic islands expose basalts and have near-circular morphology. Both are often capped by carbonate platforms. The life cycle of tectonic islands tends to be more complex than that of most volcanic islands; their elongated narrow morphology, together with their tectonic instability and high seismicity, affect the architecture of the carbonate platforms capping them, limiting coral reef development and favouring rhodalgal–foramol biota associations. A Miocene insular palaeogeography for the central Atlantic has been presented showing the distribution of tectonic islands that could have represented possible stepping stones for marine biota between continents.