Fossil and recent shallow water corals from the Atlantic Islands off Western Africa CANCAP-contribution no. 56

Miocene hermatypic corals are listed from Madeira and Porto Santo. Pleistocene and recent shallow water corals are described from the Cape Verde archipelago. The Miocene fauna was part of the Western Tethyan reef association, which went nearly completely extinct by the development of a cool water current in late Miocene times. The Cape Verde fauna immigrated from the Carribean, presumably by way of a compressed subtropical gyre during a mid Pleistocene glacial phase. The fauna was found in a beach terrace, formerly considered Tertiary, on the island of São Tiago. A lava flow directly above this deposit was radiometrically dated 700.000 ± 200.000 years B.P.