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South America, Atlantic Ocean 1 Relative to the African plate The South American plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African plate , with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge .
The adjoining plates are the Nazca plate, the South American plate, the African plate, the Somali plate, the Indo-Australian plate, the Pacific plate, and, across a transform boundary, the Scotia and South Sandwich plates. The Antarctic plate has an area of about 60,900,000 km 2 (23,500,000 sq mi). [3] It is Earth's fifth-largest tectonic plate.
Map showing Earth's principal tectonic plates and their boundaries in detail. These plates comprise the bulk of the continents and the Pacific Ocean.For purposes of this list, a major plate is any plate with an area greater than 20 million km 2 (7.7 million sq mi)
Map of plate boundaries with velocities of plate motion. The South Sandwich plate or the Sandwich plate (not to be confused with a culinary sandwich plate) is a small tectonic plate bounded by the subducting South American plate to the east, the Antarctic plate to the south, and the Scotia plate to the west.
The north–south motion of Antarctica relative to Africa and South America before anomaly 28 changed to a slow east–west clockwise motion around 60 Ma, an abrupt change coincident with change in triple junction configuration. [6] During the Late Paleocene–Early Eocene Antarctica and South America separated at a rate of only 0.3 cm/yr.
Plate tectonics (from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (tektonikós) 'pertaining to building') [1] is the scientific theory that Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago.
North American plate – Large tectonic plate including most of North America, Greenland and part of Siberia; Philippine Sea plate – Oceanic tectonic plate to the east of the Philippines; South American plate – Major tectonic plate which includes most of South America and a large part of the south Atlantic
West Antarctica was partially in the northern hemisphere, and during this period large amounts of sandstones, limestones and shales were deposited. East Antarctica was at the equator, where sea-floor invertebrates and trilobites flourished in the tropical seas. By the start of the Devonian period (416 Ma) Gondwana was in more southern latitudes ...