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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)
Plate tectonics (from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (tektonikós) ' pertaining to building ') [1] is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago.
English: Physical world map in English showing the tectonic plates boundaries with their movement vectors and selected hotspots. Français : Carte physique mondiale en anglais des limites des plaques tectoniques avec leurs vecteurs de déplacement et une sélection de hotspots.
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 Caribbean plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometres (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean plate borders the North American plate, the South American plate, the Nazca plate and the Cocos plate.
Obduction zones occurs when the continental plate is pushed under the oceanic plate, but this is unusual as the relative densities of the tectonic plates favours subduction of the oceanic plate. This causes the oceanic plate to buckle and usually results in a new mid-ocean ridge forming and turning the obduction into subduction. [citation needed]
This map was improved or created by the Wikigraphists of the Graphic Lab (fr). You can propose images to clean up, improve, create or translate as well. This SVG file contains embedded text that can be translated into your language, using any capable SVG editor, text editor or the SVG Translate tool .
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.