Juan de Fuca Plate

eight major plates

Major Tectonic Plates By Size

• North American Plate – 75,900,000 sq km. The North American Plate is the world’s second-largest tectonic plate.
• Antarctic Plate – 60,900,000 sq km.
• Somali Plate – 16,700,000 sq km.
• Caribbean Plate – 3,300,000 sq km.

There are seven major tectonic plates.

Earth’s crust is fractured into 13 major and approximately 20 total lithospheric plates. Each lithospheric plate is composed of a layer of oceanic crust or continental crust superficial to an outer layer of the mantle.

Plates come in two forms: oceanic and continental. Oceanic plates lie under oceans. They’re denser compared to continental crust, meaning they have more mass per unit volume.

The current continental and oceanic plates include: the Eurasian plate, Australian-Indian plate, Philippine plate, Pacific plate, Juan de Fuca plate, Nazca plate, Cocos plate, North American plate, Caribbean plate, South American plate, African plate, Arabian plate, the Antarctic plate, and the Scotia plate.

A tectonic plate (also called lithospheric plate) is a massive, irregularly shaped slab of solid rock, generally composed of both continental and oceanic lithosphere. Plate size can vary greatly, from a few hundred to thousands of kilometers across; the Pacific and Antarctic Plates are among the largest.

boundary

There are three main types of plate boundaries:

• Convergent boundaries: where two plates are colliding. Subduction zones occur when one or both of the tectonic plates are composed of oceanic crust.
• Divergent boundaries – where two plates are moving apart.
• Transform boundaries – where plates slide passed each other.