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I remember reading somewhere that the Antilles and Lesser Antilles are all basically continental chunks. They may have subsided to a very large degree. I know that there have been wildly fluctuating sea levels. In the Dominican Republic, you can see an old shoreline that is some 50 to 75 feet higher than the present one. Either worldwide the sea level was that much higher or that there has been elevation of this island or some variation of the two. I also recall reading that during the last ice age the sea levels were much lower than now. With an increase in water as the ice age passed, the shoreline would not only rise due to higher water levels, but to subsidence caused by the weight of the water itself. If the change from ice age to a warmer climate was sufficiently rapid, the global redistribution of mass from ice to water could have had severe effects on the balance of geological forces.

"Either worldwide the sea level was that much higher or that there has been elevation of this island or some variation of the two."

Some have speculated that the weight of the ice from the ice age (1-2 miles thick) caused the northern regions to subside and the southern regions to rise and that exactly the opposite occurred after the ice melted. (Southern region subsiding) This theory could explain some of these discoveries, perhaps.