Gilbert and Ellice Islands French captain Louis Duperrey was the first to map the whole Gilbert Islands archipelago. He commanded "La Coquille" on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825). Funafuti atoll was named Ellice's Island after Edward Ellice, a British politician and merchant, by Captain Arent de Peyster, who sighted the islands in 1819 sailing on the ship "Rebecca". Ellice owned the cargo of the ship. The name Ellice was applied to all nine islands, of what is now Tuvalu, after the work of English hydrographer Alexander George Findlay. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were formerly designated an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "GE"
Geology of the Pacific Ocean . The Pacific Ocean developed from the Panthalassa, a vast global ocean, following the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea in the Mesozoic Era, gradually forming Gondwana and Laurasia, which in turn divided. There is no firm date for when the changeover occurred, as the replacement of the sea bed is a continuous process, though reconstruction maps often change the name from Panthalassic to Pacific around the time the Atlantic Ocean began to open. The Panthalassic Ocean first opened around 750 million years ago at the breakup of Rodinia, but the oldest Pacific Ocean floor is only around 180 Ma old.