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 Co ...

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 ...

. 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 Plat ...

, on the south by the Malpelo Plate, 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

, to the south of mainland Panama, bordering the plate. It was presented together with the newly defined Malpelo Plate by

Tuo Zhang Tuo is a Chinese surname ( zh, c=庹, p=Tuǒ), and a given name in various cultures. 柁 is pronounced Tuó in Mandarin. Notable people with the surname include: 庹 * Tou Chung-hua ( zh, links=no, c=庹宗華, p=Tuǒ Zōnghuá; born 1962), Ta ...

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 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 t ...

(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, 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 t ...

, 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 The Malpelo Ridge ( es, Dorsal de Malpelo) is an elevated part of Nazca Plate off the Pacific coast of Colombia. It is a faulted chain of volcanic rock of tholeiitic composition. The Malpelo Ridge may have originated simultaneously as Carnegie R ...

, 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 navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect objects on o ...

soundings west of Ecuador and Colombia to identify a diffuse plate boundary 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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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

Description

Gallery

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links