The Pancake Rocks and Blowholes are located at Dolomite Point, immediately adjacent to the village of Punakaiki, in an area that is protected and forms part of the Paparoa National Park.

[2] The limestone rocks of the Punakaiki region began forming on the sea floor in warm coastal waters, offshore from a group of low-lying islands.

There was a great profusion and diversity of marine organisms growing in these waters, and when these animals died, their shells settled on the sea floor along with small amounts of sand and mud eroded from nearby islands.

Over millions of years, vast quantities of shell debris accumulated on the sea floor, eventually forming a thick deposit of nearly pure calcium carbonate.

[3] About 25 million years ago, at the beginning of the Miocene, there was a phase of upward movement of the Earth's crust (known as the Kaikoura Orogeny), that led to the formation of the Southern Alps.

In the Pliocene, a few million years ago, the Kaikoura Orogeny led to slow folding and faulting of sedimentary layers in the Paparoa region, raising them above sea level.

Under the influence of high pressure and compaction, small imperfections in the calcium carbonate that forms the limestone tend to aggregate in horizontal planes, in a process known as grain boundary diffusion.