File:AntarcticPlate.png · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Type
- Major
- Approximate area
- 60,900,000 km (23,500,000 sq mi)
- Movement
- South-west
- Speed
- 12–14 mm (0.47–0.55 in)/year
- Features
- Antarctica , Kerguelen Plateau , Southern Ocean
via Wikipedia infobox
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Antarctic plate is a tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and some remote islands in the Southern Ocean and other surrounding oceans. After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to its present isolated location, causing the continent to develop a much colder climate. The Antarctic plate is bounded almost entirely by extensional mid-ocean ridge systems. The adjoining plates are the Nazca plate, the South American plate, the African plate, the Somali plate, the Indo-Australian plate, the Pacific plate, and, across a transform boundary, the Scotia and South Sandwich plates.
The Antarctic plate has an area of about 60,900,000 km (23,500,000 sq mi). It is Earth's fifth-largest tectonic plate.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Antarctic Plate” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.