Maui Nui or Greater Maui, is a modern geologists' name given to a prehistoric Hawaiian Island built from seven

shield volcano A shield volcano is a type of volcano named for its low profile, resembling a warrior's shield lying on the ground. It is formed by the eruption of highly fluid (low viscosity) lava, which travels farther and forms thinner flows than the more v ...

es. ''Nui'' means "great/large" in the

Hawaiian language Hawaiian (', ) is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language ...

. 1.2 million years ago, Maui Nui was , 40% larger than the present-day island of Hawaii. Sea levels were lower than today's, due to distant

glaciation A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate bet ...

locking up the Earth's water during

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

s, thus exposing more land. As the volcanoes slowly settled by subsidence, due to the weight of the shield volcanoes and

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is di ...

, the saddles between them slowly flooded, forming four islands: Maui,

Molokai Molokai , or Molokai (), is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles (61 by 16 km) at its greatest length and width with a us ...

, Lānai, and

Kahoolawe Kahoolawe (Hawaiian: ), anglicized as Kahoolawe (), is the smallest of the eight main volcanic islands in the Hawaiian Islands. Kahoolawe is located about southwest of Maui and also southeast of Lānaʻi, and it is long by wide, with a total ...

by about 200,000 years ago. Another former volcanic island lying west of Molokai was completely submerged, and covered with a cap of

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secre ...

; it is now known as Penguin Bank. The sea floor between these four islands is relatively shallow, about deep, and all of the islands except Kahoolawe were joined during the low sea levels of the

last glacial maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eu ...

, about 20,000 years ago. But at the outer edges of former Maui Nui, as with the edges of all Hawaiian Islands, the sea floor plummets to the abyssal ocean floor of the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

. The steep slopes can result in massive

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, ...

s due to flank collapse, including one which removed most of the northern half of East Molokai. Administratively, the current islands remaining from Maui Nui comprise

Maui County Maui County, officially the County of Maui, is a county in the U.S. state of Hawaii. It consists of the islands of Maui, Lānai, Molokai (except for a portion of Molokai that comprises Kalawao County), Kahoolawe, and Molokini. The latter two ...

(except a tiny part of Molokai, which comprises

Kalawao County Kalawao () is a location on the eastern side of the Kalaupapa Peninsula of the island of Molokai, in Hawaii, which was the site of Hawaii's leper colony between 1866 and the early 20th century. Thousands of people in total came to the island to ...

). Maui Nui was formed in the

Pleistocene Epoch The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

which lasted from around 2 million years ago to about 11,000 years ago.

References

{{authority control Geology of Hawaii Islands of Hawaii Former islands of the United States Physical oceanography Volcanism of Hawaii Geography of Hawaii Geography of Maui County, Hawaii Cenozoic Hawaii

See also

References