This article is about the islands. For song "Galapagos" by The Smashing Pumpkins, see Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. For the BBC nature documentary series see Galápagos (TV series)
The Galápagos Islands (Official name: Archipiélago de Colón; other Spanish names: Islas de Colónumio or Islas Galápagos, from galápago, "saddle"—after the shells of saddlebacked Galápagos tortoises) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator, 965 kilometres (about 600 miles) west of continental Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean (
).The Galápagos archipelago, with a population of around 30,000, is a province of Ecuador, a country in northwestern South America, and the islands are all part of Ecuador's national park system.
They are famed for their vast number of endemic species and the studies by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle that contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.