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.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.