African Plate

noun

Geology.

1. a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the African continent as well as adjacent ocean basins (the Canary, Cape Verde, Angola, Cape Agulhas, Somali, Madagascar, and Natal Basins), and bounded on the north by the Eurasian and Arabian Plates, on the east by mid-ocean ridges (the Southwest Indian, Mid-Indian, and Carlsberg Ridges), on the south by the Antarctic Plate, and on the west by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Example Sentences

The Red Sea formed by separation of the Arabian Plate from the African Plate beginning 30 million years ago.

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North Africa sits on the Nubian plate, also called the African plate, which is slowly moving with respect to the Eurasian plate.

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Once a layer of beach sands that had been cemented together by weight, temperature and time into Tuscarora quartz arenite, the 425-million-year-old rocks were turned vertical when the North American continental plate collided with the African plate during the Appalachian orogeny.

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But pent-up stress caused by collisions with the African plate and Eurasian plate result in frequent earthquakes.

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Making matters more complex is a small chunk of crust called the Adriatic-Ionian microplate, which broke off of the African Plate more than 65 million years ago and is now being pushed under the larger Eurasian Plate in a process called subduction.

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