Maui Nui or Greater Maui, is a modern geologists' name given to a prehistoric Hawaiian Island built from seven shield volcanoes. ''Nui'' means "great/large" in the Hawaiian language. 1.2 million years ago, Maui Nui was , 40% larger than the present-day

island of Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii ) is the largest island in the United States, located in the state of Hawaii. It is the southeasternmost of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of volcanic islands in the North Pacific Ocean. With an area of , it has 63% of ...

. 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 betw ...

locking up the Earth's water during ice ages, thus exposing more land. As the volcanoes slowly settled by subsidence, due to the weight of the shield volcanoes and erosion, the saddles between them slowly flooded, forming four islands:

Maui The island of Maui (; Hawaiian: ) is the second-largest of the islands of the state of Hawaii at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2) and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which ...

, Molokai, 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; it is now known as

Penguin Bank Penguin Bank is the name given to a now-submerged shield volcano of the Hawaiian Islands. Its coral-capped remains lie immediately west of the island of Molokai, under relatively shallow water (see bathymetric map at the right). Geology The Pen ...

. 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, 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 steep slopes can result in massive landslides 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 a ...

(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 l ...

). 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 i ...

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