The Coiba Plate is a
small tectonic plate (microplate) located off the coasts south of
Panama
Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Cos ...
and northwestern
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
. It is named after
Coiba
Coiba is the largest island in Central America, with an area of , off the Pacific coast of the Panamanian province of Chiriquí. It is part of the Tolé District of that province.
History
Coiba separated from continental Panama about 12,000 to ...
, the largest island of Central America, just north of the plate offshore southern Panama. It is bounded on the west by the
Cocos Plate
The Cocos Plate is a young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America, named for Cocos Island, which rides upon it. The Cocos Plate was created approximately 23 million years ago when the Farallon Plate ...
, on the south by the
Malpelo Plate
The Malpelo Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) located off the coasts west of Ecuador and Colombia. It is the 57th plate to be identified. It is named after Malpelo Island, the only emerged part of the plate. It is bounded on the west ...
, on the east by the
North Andes Plate, and on the north by the
Panama Plate. This microplate was previously assumed to be part of the Nazca Plate, forming the northeastern tongue of the Nazca Plate together with the Malpelo Plate. Bordering the Coiba Plate on the east are the north-south
striking Bahía Solano Fault and east of that, the
Serranía de Baudó, an isolated mountain chain in northwestern
Chocó, Colombia.
Description
The Coiba Plate was identified as early as 1981 by Pennington, and later in 1988 by Adamek et al.
[Zhang et al., 2017] It is named after
Coiba
Coiba is the largest island in Central America, with an area of , off the Pacific coast of the Panamanian province of Chiriquí. It is part of the Tolé District of that province.
History
Coiba separated from continental Panama about 12,000 to ...
, to the south of mainland Panama, bordering the plate. It was presented together with the newly defined Malpelo Plate by
Tuo Zhang and lead-researcher
Richard G. Gordon et al. of
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...
in a paper published in August 2017.
[ The Coiba Transform Fault (CTF) separates the Coiba Plate from the Malpelo Plate. The slab tear between the microplates could have happened during the fragmentation of the ]Farallon Plate
The Farallon Plate was an ancient oceanic plate. It formed one of the three main plates of Panthalassa, alongside the Phoenix Plate and Izanagi Plate, which were connected by a triple junction. The Farallon Plate began subducting under the west c ...
, in the Oligocene
The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...
, around 30 to 25 Ma.[Chiarabba et al., 2016, p.22] The Coiba Ridge, a submerged part of the plate probably formed at the Galápagos hotspot
The Galápagos hotspot is a volcanic hotspot in the East Pacific Ocean responsible for the creation of the Galápagos Islands as well as three major aseismic ridge systems, Carnegie, Cocos and Malpelo which are on two tectonic plates. The hots ...
, in contrast with the Malpelo Ridge, a product of volcanic activity.[Meschede & Barckhausen, 2000, p.1]
The researchers led by Gordon used a Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
database of multibeam sonar
Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigation, navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect o ...
soundings west of Ecuador and Colombia to identify a diffuse plate boundary
Plate tectonics (from the la, label=Late Latin, tectonicus, from the grc, τεκτονικός, lit=pertaining to building) is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large te ...
that runs from the Panama Transform Fault (PTF) eastward.[
]
Gallery
File:NazcaPlate.png, Former plate boundaries in the Pacific, offshore western South America
File:Mapa de Amenaza Sísmica de Colombia.png, Seismic activity map of Colombia
File:Isla de Coiba - Granite de Oro - Pacific Ocean Islands off Panama - panoramio (4).jpg, Coiba, namesake of the plate
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
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External links
Map of the Coiba Plate
{{Tectonism in Colombia, state=expanded
Tectonic plates
Geology of Central America
Geology of Colombia
Geology of Panama
Geology of the Pacific Ocean
Geography of Chocó Department
Los Santos Province
Veraguas Province