Macdonald hotspot

The Macdonald hotspot is in the Pacific Ocean, marked 24 on this map.
The Macdonald hotspot has been grouped into the Pacific Ocean's Hotspot highway

The Macdonald hotspot (also known as "Tubuai" or "Old Rurutu"[1]) is a volcanic hotspot in the southern Pacific Ocean. The hotspot was responsible for the formation of the Macdonald Seamount, and possibly the Austral-Cook Islands chain.[2] It probably did not generate all of the volcanism in the Austral and Cook Islands as age data imply that several additional hotspots were needed to generate some volcanoes.

In addition to the volcanoes in the Austral Islands and Cook Islands, Tokelau, the Gilbert Islands, the Phoenix Islands and several of the Marshall Islands as well as several seamounts in the Marshall Islands may have been formed by the Macdonald hotspot.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference KonterFinlayson2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Morgan1971 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).