Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Caroline plate – Minor oceanic tectonic plate north of New Guinea – 1,700,000 km 2 (660,000 sq mi) Cocos plate – Young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America – 2,900,000 km 2 (1,100,000 sq mi) Indian plate – Minor plate that separated from Gondwana – 11,900,000 km 2 (4,600,000 sq mi)
Earth's lithosphere, the rigid outer shell of the planet including the crust and upper mantle, is fractured into seven or eight major plates (depending on how they are defined) and many minor plates or "platelets". Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of plate boundary (or fault): convergent, divergent, or transform ...
The Capricorn plate is a proposed [clarification needed] minor tectonic plate lying beneath the Indian Ocean basin in the southern and eastern hemispheres. The original theory of plate tectonics , as accepted by the scientific community in the 1960s, assumed fully rigid plates and relatively narrow, distinct plate boundaries.
Earth's lithosphere, the rigid outer shell of the planet including the crust and upper mantle, is fractured into seven or eight major plates (depending on how they are defined) and many minor plates or "platelets". Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of plate boundary (or fault): convergent, divergent, or transform.
The Rivera plate, north of the Cocos plate, is thought to have separated from the Cocos plate 5–10 million years ago. The boundary between the two plates appears to lack a definite transform fault, yet they are regarded as distinct. After its separation from the Cocos plate, the Rivera plate started acting as an independent microplate. [2]
The Okinawa plate is bounded on the western side by the Okinawa Trough, a back arc basin and divergent boundary with the Yangtze plate. A section of the southern boundary between the Okinawa plate and the Philippine Sea plate is a former subduction zone that now accommodates oblique slip and was the location of the 1771 Great Yaeyama Tsunami .
The Antarctic plate is a tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and some remote islands in the Southern Ocean and other surrounding oceans. After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea ), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to its present ...
Marine geological studies were of extreme importance in providing the critical evidence for sea floor spreading and plate tectonics in the years following World War II. The deep ocean floor is the last essentially unexplored frontier and detailed mapping in support of economic ( petroleum and metal mining ), natural disaster mitigation, and ...