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The Galápagos Islands (official name: ''Archipiélago de Colón'', other Spanish name: ''Islas Galápagos'', (:ˈislas gaˈlapaɣos)) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part. The Galápagos Islands and their surrounding waters form the Galápagos Province of Ecuador, the Galápagos National Park, and the Galápagos Marine Reserve. The principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of slightly over 25,000. The islands are famed for their vast number of endemic species and were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the ''Beagle''. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The first recorded visit to the islands happened by chance in 1535, when the Bishop of Panamá Fray Tomás de Berlanga went to Peru to arbitrate in a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. De Berlanga was blown off course, though he eventually returned to the Spanish Empire and described the conditions of the islands and the animals that inhabited them. The group of islands was shown and named in Abraham Ortelius's atlas published in 1570. The first crude map of the islands was made in 1684 by the buccaneer Ambrose Cowley, who named the individual islands after some of his fellow pirates or after British royalty and noblemen. These names were used in the authoritative navigation charts of the islands prepared during the ''Beagle'' survey under captain Robert Fitzroy, and in Darwin's popular book ''The Voyage of the Beagle''. The new Republic of Ecuador took the islands from Spanish ownership in 1832, and subsequently gave them official Spanish names.〔(Discovery ), (Darwin and Evolution )〕 The older names remained in use in English language publications, including Herman Melville's ''The Encantadas'' of 1854. ==Physical geography== The islands are located in the eastern Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of South America. The closest land mass is that of mainland Ecuador, the country to which they belong, 926 km/500 nmi to the east. The islands are found at the coordinates 1°40'N–1°36'S, 89°16'–92°01'W. Straddling the equator, islands in the chain are located in both the northern and southern hemispheres, with Volcán Wolf and Volcán Ecuador on Isla Isabela being directly on the equator. Española Island, the southernmost islet of the archipelago, and Darwin Island, the northernmost one, are spread out over a distance of . The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) considers them wholly within the South Pacific Ocean, however. The Galápagos Archipelago consists of of land spread over of ocean. The largest of the islands, Isabela, measures 2,250 sq mi/5,827 km2〔("Galápagos Islands." ) The Columbia Encyclopedia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015〕 and makes up close to three-quarters of the total land area of the Galápagos. Volcán Wolf on Isabela is the highest point, with an elevation of 1,707 m (5,600 ft) above sea level. The group consists of 18 main islands, 3 smaller islands, and 107 rocks and islets. The islands are located at the Galapagos Triple Junction. The archipelago is located on the Nazca Plate (a tectonic plate), which is moving east/southeast, diving under the South American Plate at a rate of about per year. It is also atop the Galapagos hotspot, a place where the Earth's crust is being melted from below by a mantle plume, creating volcanoes. The first islands formed here at least 8 million and possibly up to 90 million years ago. While the older islands have disappeared below the sea as they moved away from the mantle plume, the youngest islands, Isabela and Fernandina, are still being formed, with the most recent volcanic eruption in April 2009 where lava from the volcanic island Fernandina started flowing both towards the island's shoreline and into the center caldera. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Galápagos Islands」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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