Global Tectonic Plates Directory

The African Plate spans the entire African continent and stretches out into the surrounding Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

It is slowly tearing apart along the East African Rift, where the Somali Plate is breaking away. Up north, its collision with Eurasia pushed up the Alps and shaped the Mediterranean, while grinding against the Arabian Plate opened up the Red Sea.

The Antarctic Plate holds the frozen continent of Antarctica and the surrounding Southern Ocean floor.

Uniquely, almost its entire border consists of divergent mid-ocean ridges where new crust is created. Because it is ringed by spreading ridges, the plate is slowly expanding outward in every direction.

The Australia Plate carries Australia, parts of New Zealand, and surrounding ocean floor northward at about 7 centimeters per year.

Its northern boundary grinds violently into the Pacific and Sunda plates, producing intense tectonic activity across Indonesia and Papua New Guinea while driving active mountain uplift.

The Eurasian Plate is one of the largest plates on the planet, covering most of Europe and Asia.

It stretches from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the west all the way to Pacific trenches in the east. Its massive head-on collision with India pushed up the Himalayas, which are still rising today.

The North American Plate covers North America, Greenland, and large chunks of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

Its western edge grinds past the Pacific Plate along California's San Andreas Fault. On its eastern edge, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge creates fresh ocean crust, steadily widening the Atlantic Ocean by a few centimeters each year.

The Pacific Plate is the biggest tectonic plate on Earth, underlying most of the Pacific Ocean basin.

Its perimeter forms the famous Ring of Fire. As the plate drifts northwest at 8 to 10 centimeters a year, it dives under neighboring plates, carving ultra-deep ocean trenches, sparking major quakes, and feeding chains of volcanoes.

The South American Plate carries the entire continent and extends eastward into the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Along its west coast, the incoming Nazca Plate slides underneath it, crumpling the land into the towering Andes Mountains and fueling active volcanoes. On the eastern side, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge pushes the continent westward year after year.

The Arabian Plate is tearing away from Africa along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, a rift that started about 30 million years ago.

As new ocean crust forms in the gap, the Red Sea is slowly turning into a wider ocean basin. To the north, the plate pushes into Eurasia, throwing up the Zagros Mountains in Iran.

The Caribbean Plate is mostly oceanic crust wedged right between North and South America.

Its edges are packed with active fault lines, including the Enriquillo fault in Haiti and the Lesser Antilles subduction zone. Those boundaries feed the Caribbean's volcanic island arcs and trigger frequent earthquakes.

The Cocos Plate is a young, dense oceanic plate in the eastern Pacific, born at the East Pacific Rise.

It slides quickly under Central America, creating the Middle America Trench and feeding the Central American Volcanic Arc, the source of active volcanoes from Guatemala down to Costa Rica.

The Juan de Fuca Plate is a small oceanic slab off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia.

It is a surviving piece of the ancient Farallon Plate. As it slides under North America, it fuels the Cascade volcanoes (like Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier) and poses the risk of major megathrust earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest.

The Nazca Plate is a fast-moving oceanic plate in the eastern Pacific cruising east at around 8 centimeters a year.

It rams head-on into South America and dives downward, forming the deep Peru-Chile Trench and shoving up the Andes mountains while fueling frequent, powerful earthquakes along the coast.

The Philippine Sea Plate is surrounded by subduction zones on almost all sides, making it an intense geological hotspot.

It borders the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth at nearly 11,000 meters. The constant friction along its edges feeds active volcanic island arcs across the Philippines and Mariana Islands.

The Scotia Plate is a small oceanic plate sitting in the rough waters between South America and Antarctica.

Pinned between two giants, it slides eastward along big transform faults. Its eastern edge curves into the volcanic South Sandwich Islands, where active submarine and surface eruptions happen regularly.

The Aegean Sea Plate is an active microplate caught in the crunch zone between Africa, Eurasia, and Anatolia.

As the African Plate sinks underneath it, the region stretches from behind, sparking earthquakes and feeding active volcanic centers like Santorini across the Greek islands.

The Altiplano Plate underlies the high Altiplano plateau in the central Andes, the largest high plateau on Earth outside Tibet.

It formed as the Nazca Plate slid flat beneath South America, buckling the crust into a plateau that averages 3,750 meters in altitude and holds huge lithium and salt deposits.

The Amur Plate is a proposed minor plate covering parts of eastern Russia, northeast China, and the Korean Peninsula.

It is separated from Eurasia by the Baikal Rift Zone, home to Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest freshwater lake on Earth. Geologists still study whether it moves as its own independent block.

The Anatolia Plate carries most of Turkey and is getting squeezed westward like a watermelon seed between colliding African and Eurasian plates.

This westward escape is channeled by the North Anatolian and East Anatolian faults, two of the most active strike-slip faults in the world that have triggered major historical earthquakes.

The Balmoral Reef Plate is one of the tiniest tectonic plates on Earth, located in the southwestern Pacific near Fiji.

Surrounded by transform faults and mini spreading centers, it shows that plate tectonics operates at every scale, from continent-sized slabs down to localized crustal fragments.

The Banda Sea Plate sits in eastern Indonesia, trapped inside a horseshoe curve of active subduction zones.

Because crust is getting swallowed on nearly every side, it creates a deep ocean basin surrounded by one of the most concentrated chains of active volcanoes in the Pacific.

The Birds Head Plate underlies the bird-shaped northwest peninsula of New Guinea.

Caught between the massive Australian and Pacific plates, this microplate spins and rotates under intense pressure, heavily folding and twisting the local rock layers.

The Burma Plate is a narrow sliver plate caught along the edge of Southeast Asia, shaped by India's oblique crash into Asia.

The active Sagaing Fault cuts straight through Myanmar along its eastern border, generating strong earthquakes, while its western trench was the source of the catastrophic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The Caroline Plate is an oceanic microplate in the western Pacific, bounded by spreading ridges and deep trenches.

It moves independently from the giant Pacific and Philippine Sea plates nearby, maintaining a relatively quiet interior compared to the stormy subduction zones along its edges.

The Conway Reef Plate is a microplate in the South Pacific near Fiji, named after a submerged coral atoll.

It rotates on its own as it gets squeezed between larger tectonic neighbors, making it a classic case study in how small crustal blocks twist under regional pressure.

The Easter Plate is an oceanic microplate in the southeastern Pacific that hosts isolated Easter Island (Rapa Nui).

It sits near the East Pacific Rise, bounded by actively spreading ridges, while volcanic hotspot activity from deep in the mantle pushed up the island itself.

The Futuna Plate is a small oceanic microplate in the southwestern Pacific near Wallis and Futuna.

It sits in a dynamic zone of colliding and shearing plates, marked by frequent underwater tremors and submarine volcanic activity across the local seafloor.

The Galapagos Plate is a microplate sitting right at a rare triple junction where the Nazca, Cocos, and Pacific plates meet.

Deep below, a stationary mantle hotspot melts through the crust to feed the Galapagos archipelago, creating a chain of young volcanic islands famous for their isolated wildlife.

The Indian Plate is one of the fastest movers on Earth, racing north at roughly 5 centimeters per year.

Around 50 million years ago, it slammed into Eurasia, throwing up the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. That collision is still going strong today, lifting mountain peaks by millimeters each year and causing heavy regional tremors.

The Juan Fernandez Plate is a small oceanic microplate off the coast of Chile, near the islands where Alexander Selkirk was marooned.

Surrounded by spreading centers connecting the Pacific, Nazca, and Antarctic systems, it rotates quickly as it rides between the bigger plates.

The Kermadec Plate sits along a violent subduction trench northeast of New Zealand.

As the Pacific Plate dives underneath it, it carves the ultra-deep Kermadec Trench and feeds a chain of active submarine volcanoes that regularly shake the region with deep earthquakes.

The Manus Plate is actively forming in a spreading basin north of Papua New Guinea.

As the seafloor pulls apart behind a subduction zone, it spews out black smoker hydrothermal vents with mineral-rich fluids exceeding 400 degrees Celsius, supporting bizarre deep-sea life.

The Maoke Plate sits directly beneath the high central mountain spine of New Guinea.

Formed right in the collision zone between the Australian and Pacific plates, it pushes mountain peaks over 4,800 meters high, complete with rare equatorial glaciers.

The Mariana Plate carries the Mariana island arc and borders the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot on Earth at nearly 11,000 meters below sea level.

The older Pacific Plate dives steeply beneath it, triggering strong earthquakes and feeding a string of active volcanoes and deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

The Molucca Sea Plate in eastern Indonesia has the unusual fate of being swallowed from both sides at once.

This double-subduction setup means the plate is shrinking year by year, and geologists expect it will eventually vanish entirely into Earth's mantle.

The New Hebrides Plate supports the island nation of Vanuatu, one of the most volcanically active places on Earth.

The Australian Plate slides underneath it along the New Hebrides Trench, fueling energetic volcanoes like Yasur and triggering regular earthquakes.

The Niuafo'ou Plate is a small back-arc microplate in the northern Tonga region, named after volcanic Niuafo'ou island.

It formed as the crust stretched and rifted behind the Tonga subduction zone, hosting submarine spreading centers and active hydrothermal vents.

The North Andes Plate is a continental fragment across Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela that is getting squeezed northeastward.

As the Nazca Plate slides obliquely beneath South America, this escape motion produces active strike-slip faults and feeds towering volcanoes like Cotopaxi.

The North Bismarck Plate is an oceanic microplate in the Bismarck Sea north of Papua New Guinea.

It floats in a chaotic collision zone between the Australian and Pacific plates, surrounded by active faults, rotating microplates, and frequent seismic shocks.

The Okhotsk Plate covers eastern Siberia, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Its eastern edge meets the Pacific Plate along the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, creating one of the most volcanically explosive regions on the globe with dozens of towering active volcanoes.

The Okinawa Plate is an active back-arc basin forming behind Japan's Ryukyu island chain.

As the seafloor stretches in the Okinawa Trough, new oceanic crust is being born right before our eyes, accompanied by bubbling hydrothermal fields on the seafloor.

The Panama Plate is a microplate squeezed between the Caribbean, Cocos, and South American plates, carrying the Isthmus of Panama.

When this land bridge rose roughly 3 million years ago, it shut off water flow between the Atlantic and Pacific, permanently changing global ocean currents and climate.

The Rivera Plate is a small oceanic slab off Mexico's Pacific coast, another surviving fragment of the ancient Farallon Plate.

It slides beneath Mexico at a shallow angle, helping fuel western Mexico's active volcanoes along the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt and triggering regional earthquakes.

The Sandwich Plate is a remote oceanic microplate in the icy waters of the South Atlantic.

As the South American Plate dives beneath it along the South Sandwich Trench, it builds a curving chain of active volcanic islands that erupt regularly in one of Earth's loneliest spots.

The Shetland Plate is a microplate in the Bransfield Strait between the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula.

It forms an active rift basin where the crust is pulling apart, creating underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents in the freezing Antarctic waters.

The Solomon Sea Plate is a fast-moving oceanic microplate near Papua New Guinea, cruising westward at about 10 centimeters a year.

Bordered by subduction trenches on multiple sides, it is constantly being pulled and squeezed, making this one of the most seismically restless spots in the Pacific.

The Somalia Plate is the eastern piece of Africa currently splitting away from the main African Plate along the East African Rift.

As the rift widens, it generates tremors, forms deep rift lakes, and feeds iconic volcanoes like Mount Kilimanjaro. Millions of years from now, it will become an island continent.

The South Bismarck Plate sits in the southern Bismarck Sea, acting as the counterpart to the North Bismarck Plate.

It absorbs the intense friction between converging Pacific and Australian plates, bounded by the deep New Britain Trench where major subduction quakes originate.

The Sunda Plate carries most of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Thailand, and western Indonesia.

It is ringed by high-friction subduction zones along the Sunda Trench, which spawned the catastrophic 2004 earthquake and tsunami and powers dozens of active Indonesian volcanoes.

The Timor Plate is caught in an active collision where the Australian continent is actively crashing into Southeast Asia.

This collision is crumpling the crust and pushing up mountain ranges across the island of Timor, offering a real-time look at how mountain belts form.

The Tonga Plate holds the world record for the fastest subduction rate, diving into the mantle at up to 24 centimeters per year.

This intense speed carves the Tonga Trench (over 10,800 meters deep), feeds a chain of explosive island volcanoes, and sparks some of the deepest earthquakes ever recorded.

The Woodlark Plate near Papua New Guinea is a rare place where a continental rift is turning directly into a brand-new ocean basin.

The basin is opening at roughly 10 centimeters a year, giving scientists a front-row seat to watch how continents split and oceans are born.

The Yangtze Plate is an ancient, stable continental block underlying eastern and southern China, including the Yangtze River basin.

It has remained geologically solid for over a billion years, while its edges preserve the scars of ancient collisions that helped piece together the Asian continent.