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Depending on the context, the term Pacific Islands may refer to one of several different concepts: (1) those countries and islands with common Austronesian origins, (2) the islands once (or currently) colonized, (3) the geographical region of Oceania, or (4) any island located in the Pacific Ocean.
By tradition, the islands located in the southern Pacific have also often been called the South Sea Islands, [4] and their inhabitants have been called South Sea Islanders. The Hawaiian Islands have often been considered to be part of the South Sea Islands because of their relative proximity to the southern Pacific islands, even though they are ...
The plate formed because the triple junction had converted to an unstable form surrounded on all sides by transform faults, due to the development of a kink in one of the plate boundaries. The "Pacific Triangle", the oldest part of the Pacific plate, created during the initial stages of plate formation, is located just east of the Mariana ...
Outside the triangle, there are traces of Polynesian settlement as far north as Necker Island (Mokumanamana), as far east as Salas y Gómez Island (Motu Motiro Hiva), and as far south as Enderby Island . Also, there have once been Polynesian settlements on Norfolk Island and the Kermadec Islands . By the time the Europeans first arrived, these ...
This chain of islands, or archipelago, developed as the Pacific plate slowly moved northwestward over a hotspot in the Earth's mantle at a rate of approximately 32 miles (51 km) per million years. Thus, the southeast island is volcanically active, whereas the islands on the northwest end of the archipelago are older and typically smaller, due ...
Palau, [a] officially the Republic of Palau, [b] [8] is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the western Pacific Ocean.The republic consists of approximately 340 islands and is the western part of the Caroline Islands, while the eastern and central parts make up the Federated States of Micronesia.
Nauru is an oval-shaped island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, 42 km (26 mi) south of the Equator, listed as the world's smallest republic, covering just 21 km 2 (8 sq mi). [21] With 12,511 residents, it is the third least-populated country , after Vatican City and Tuvalu .
Map depicts sovereign states and a de facto state (tw) fully located on islands: those with land borders shaded green, and those without shaded dark blue. Countries/territories not shown on the map: Antarctica (aq) (continental disputed territory), Australia (au) (continental country), the Cook Islands (ck) and Niue (nu) (free association with New Zealand), Greenland (gl) (constituent country ...