Galápagos Triple Junction
The Galápagos triple junction (GTJ) is a geological area in the eastern Pacific Ocean several hundred miles west of the Galápagos Islands where three tectonic plates – the Cocos plate, the Nazca plate, and the Pacific plate – meet. It is an unusual type of triple junction in which the three plates do not meet at a simple intersection. Instead, the junction includes two small microplates, the Galápagos microplate and the northern Galápagos microplate, caught in the junction, turning synchronously with respect to each other and separated by the Hess Deep rift. Introduction The GTJ is located off the western coast of South America and has been studied for its unique geologic structure of a triple junction. Although this collision is not uniform in its entirety, geologists and scientists have used various forms of study in an attempt to understand its physical history. Over time, it has been hypothesized that the triple junction of the Nazca, Cocos, and Pacific plates was o ...
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