Saint-Martin and Saint-Barth were originally part of one and the same island called Granola! An island so vast that it included Anguilla and even Puerto Rico.
This is what emerges from a study which has just appeared in the American journal "Plos one". A study carried out in part thanks to a mission by the Atalante ship, departing from Guadeloupe, in 2017, and co-directed by a researcher from the University of the Antilles.
Granola. Thus was named a former large Caribbean island, comparable in size to that of the present-day Greater Antilles. An island now submerged, but which, tens of millions of years ago, would have served as a land bridge between Puerto Rico, Saba, and the northern islands. A continental bridge crossing the Caribbean Sea from north to south about 35 million years ago. A large island that has disappeared, because now at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. An area now located under one kilometer of water on average.
Giant rats
At the time, this island was supposed to allow land traffic between the Greater and Lesser Antilles. The researchers initially tried to find scientific evidence of these terrestrial passages which could explain the presence of "giant rats" (which can weigh up to 200 kilos) whose descendants have been found on islands now separated from each other by the Sea. Because in the Greater Antilles, rodents of this type, some of which have been found in fossil form, are closely related to those found on the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles, suggesting the possibility of terrestrial exchanges between these different places .
This transdisciplinary scientific study which has just been finalized took place on land and at sea, coupling tectonics, biostratigraphy, geochronology, geophysics, marine geology and geodynamics in order to understand the evolution of this ancient island. Until now, no study had explained its emergence and then its submersion.
A mission of Atalante
The study was carried out in part thanks to a mission by the Atalante ship in 2017, which made it possible to draw up an underwater cartography of the area. The author of this scientific article is a researcher from the University of the Antilles, Melody Philippon, lecturer in Geoscience at the University of the Antilles (Guadeloupe pole), specialist in plate tectonics.
Another study is in progress, seeking to determine this time if Guadeloupe could be connected to this Granola island, 120 years ago, during the ice age, when the water level had fallen sharply. (source RCI)
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