Page 4 - 2008 NZ SUB ANTARCTIC ISLANDS - SMARTPHONE

Such is the Maori version of the origin of their home islands: Aotearoa, as they call New Zealand
in their language. With great fascination, I learned that modern geologists’ have a theory about
the origin of this wonderful place that does not conflict fatally with the Maori version. These
scientists deal with plate tectonics rupturing huge land masses occurring 200 millions years ago
and with powerful under-ocean earthquakes causing sea bottoms to rise. Gondwanaland is the
name geologists have given to the supercontinent from which India, Africa, Australia and
Antarctica were born. Of course, all the smaller land masses in the Southern Hemisphere also
were ripped off this giant continent—including New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia,
Malaysia, and much smaller bits. They postulate that New Zealand was torn away from
Gondwanaland about 160 million years ago at a time when much of what would become that
country was more like continental shelf than a large island. Over the millennia, more of it sank
beneath the ocean and became ocean bottom. Because of all the pushing and pulling of the
Australian and Pacific tectonic plates and the subsequent earthquakes, synclines (deep trenches),
and volcanic eruptions beneath the sea, the many islands forming New Zealand today were forced
upwards until they reached sea level and above. Isn’t that rather akin to how Maui hooked the
sea bottom and pulled it up above the waves?

A further detail in the Maori story concerns the damage that the two elder brothers wreaked on
Maui’s “big fish” by trying to hack bits off and gouge deep to obtain the meat. That’s their story
to explain the mountains and fjords and plains that form the islands. Geologists say these features
are the creation of the volcanic action caused by the constant pressure of the two tectonic plates,
the Australian plate moving southwest and the Pacific plate moving northerly. The fissures and
earthquakes cause mountains to continue rising and lakes to form in depressions and the coastline
to change continuously over geologic time. Geologists say that the city of Christchurch on the
eastern coast of New Zealand’s South island is moving in a different direction from Wellington
on the southern tip of the North Island by about 4 millimeters a year! That’s rather quickly in
geologic time! The geologists postulate that this strange journey occurs because the North Island
rides the Australian plate and half the South Island sits on the Pacific plate. 1000 years ago when
the Maoris discovered Aotearoa, they postulated that the island was a gift from the ocean!
Modern plate tectonic theory does not disagree.

After the great rending off, New Zealand was a “whale rider” apart from the other sections of the
supercontinent. Its plant and animal life developed completely separately from the rest. Even its
geologic development was unlike the other remaining land chunks. No mammal ever evolved in
New Zealand with the exception of three bat species, one of which is already extinct. There are
some amphibians and reptiles, but no snakes. There is also a “living fossil” from the dinosaur
age, the tuatara—an iguana-like creature. Insects and plants evolved riotously on the islands, but
they are distinct from those elsewhere in the world. But where Mother Nature produced the most
flamboyant evolutionary pattern is in the avian world. Birds have filled every niche possible so
that birds take the places usually occupied by mammals or marsupials in other parts of the globe.
Thus there are birds that live like squirrels or others like forage like mice and occupy similar
homes. Most amazing is that many of these native birds became flightless because there were no
predators to create an advantage to flight. No wonder pre-historic New Zealand is described as a
paradise for the creatures who lived there!

For millennia, that paradise continued undisturbed except by the slow mechanisms of evolution,
the alterations in weather patterns, the uplifts and drops in the land caused by volcanic activity
and the pushing and shoving of plate tectonics. The plants and animals were subject only to the
dictates of Mother Nature. 1000 years ago, this paradise was invaded. Destroyed may be a better
term for it. How? Man arrived in the form of the Polynesian wanderers and explorers we now
call the Maori. With man came annihilation. In the case of New Zealand, that devastation took

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