fossils over 300 million years old. Marine protected areas Four marine national parks were established in 2010 – Coelacanth National Park (92.76 km2) along the south shore of Grande Comore, Mitsamiouli Ndroude National Park (23.14 km2) along the north shore of Grande Comore, Mohéli National Park (643.62 km2) around Mohéli, and Shisiwani National Park (64.97 km2) around Anjouan's Sima Peninsula. Politics The Comoro Archipelago is divided between: The Union of the Comoros, a sovereign nation formed by the three islands of Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli. Mayotte, an Overseas Department of the French Republic (département d'outre-mer). This island is also claimed by the Union of the Comoros according to Article 1 of its Constitution. The United Nations General Assembly continued to condemn the French presence in Mayotte until 1994. France, however, used its power of veto in the UN to prevent the Security Council from passing a resolution condemning France. The African Union judged the French presence on Mayotte to be illegal. Mayotte became a French Department on 31 March 2011. The Comoros underwent a political crisis that started off in 1997 with the separatism on Anjouan. The political authorities on the island had turned the population of the island against the central government, advocating at first reunification with France, and later a greater autonomy bordering on independence. Since 2006, the Ex-President of the Union of the Comoros, Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, who is originally from the island of Anjouan, has been in open conflict with the authorities of Anjouan, a conflict which ended in a military landing of the National Army of Development in order to re-establish the authority of the Union on the island. See also Music of the Comoro Islands Comorian society References Further reading Ottenheimer, Martin, and Harriet Ottenheimer. Historical dictionary of the Comoro Islands (Scarecrow Press, 1994). Walker, Iain. Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros (Oxford University Press, 2019) online review. Olivier Hawlitschek, Rémy Eudeline & Antoine Rouillé, Terrestrial fauna of the Comoros Archipelago, (Field Guides, 2020), 338 p. (). Geology Esson J., M.F.J., Flower, D.F. Strong, B.G.J. Upton, and W.J. Wadsworth, Geology of the Comores archipelago western Indian Ocean Geological Magazine 107 (6) 549-557 1970 Flower, M.F.J., Evidence for the role of phlogopite in the genesis of alkali basalts Contrib. Mineral. Petrol. 32 (2) 126-137 1971 Flower, M.F.J., Rare earth element distribution in lavas and ultramafic xenoliths from the Comores archipelago,