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The North American plate is a tectonic plate containing most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores.With an area of 76 million km 2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific plate (which borders the plate to the west).
The regions that are not geographically North American but reside on the North American Plate include parts of Siberia (see the Geology of Russia), [2] and Iceland, and Bermuda. A discussion of North American geology can also include other continental plates including the Cocos Plats and Juan de Fuca Plate being subducted beneath western North ...
North American plate – Large tectonic plate including most of North America, Greenland and part of Siberia – 75,900,000 km 2 (29,300,000 sq mi) Pacific plate – Oceanic tectonic plate under the Pacific Ocean – 103,300,000 km 2 (39,900,000 sq mi)
As the edge of North America moved away from the hot rift zone, it began to cool and subside beneath the new Atlantic Ocean. This once-active divergent plate boundary became the passive, trailing edge of westward moving North America. In plate tectonic terms, the Atlantic Plain is known as a classic example of a passive continental margin. [20]
One of the smallest of Earth's tectonic plates, the Juan de Fuca plate is a remnant part of the once-vast Farallon plate, which is now largely subducted underneath the North American plate. In plate tectonic reconstructions, the Juan de Fuca plate is referred to as the Vancouver plate between the break-up of the Farallon plate c. 55–52 Ma and ...
Areas of Cenozoic North America that were covered by seawater tended to be areas near the modern coasts. [135] The Cannonball Sea near Minot, North Dakota was the last of the North American interior. [136] Cenozoic marine invertebrates are best known from deposits near the coasts and tend to resemble modern forms.
Western North America suffered the effects of repeated collision as the Kula and Farallon Plates sank beneath the continental edge. Slivers of continental crust, carried along by subducting ocean plates, were swept into the subduction zone and scraped onto North America's western edge. [12] These terranes represent a variety of tectonic ...
The North American plate itself is moving slowly in a generally southwest direction, sliding over the smaller plates as well as the huge oceanic Pacific plate (which is moving in a northwest direction) in other locations such as the San Andreas Fault in central and southern California. Tectonic processes active in the Cascadia subduction zone ...