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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).
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)
(Click to zoom) See legend below This is the legend for the North American geological map above. Geologic map of North America. The geology of North America is a subject of regional geology and covers the North American continent, the third-largest in the world. Geologic units and processes are investigated on a large scale to reach a ...
The Queen Charlotte Fault on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America; The Motagua Fault, which crosses through Guatemala, is a transform boundary between the southern edge of the North American plate and the northern edge of the Caribbean plate. New Zealand's Alpine Fault is another active transform boundary.
Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of plate boundary (or fault): convergent, divergent, or transform. The relative movement of the plates typically ranges from zero to 10 cm annually. [5] Faults tend to be geologically active, experiencing earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation.
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] During the rifting, South America tore away from North America and headed southward.
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
The Azores triple junction is a geologic triple junction where the boundaries of three tectonic plates intersect: the North American plate, the Eurasian plate and the African plate, R-R-R. [9] The Boso triple junction offshore of Japan is a T-T-T triple junction between the Okhotsk microplate, Pacific plate and Philippine Sea plate.