The North Galapagos Microplate is a small

tectonic plate 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 ...

off the west coast of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

north of the Galapagos Islands. It is rotating counterclockwise between three much larger crustal plates around it, the

Nazca Nazca (; sometimes spelled Nasca; qu, Naska) is a city and system of valleys on the southern coast of Peru. It is also the name of the largest existing town in the Nazca Province. The name is derived from the Nazca culture, which flourished in ...

, Cocos and

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

Plates. To its south, another small microplate, the Galapagos Microplate is likewise rotating, but clockwise. Both microplates "mesh" along the interface between them.

References

Bird, P. (2003) An updated digital model of plate boundaries, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 4(3), 1027,

Tectonic plates Geology of the Pacific Ocean {{tectonics-stub