East Pacific Rise

American  

[eest puh-sif-ik rahyz] / ˈist pəˈsɪf ɪk ˈraɪz /

noun

1. a long north-south elevation of the seafloor in the eastern Pacific Ocean extending southward from southwestern Mexico to the Southern Ocean, separating the Pacific Plate from the North American, Rivera, Cocos, Nazca, and Antarctic Plates. EPR

---

Etymology

Origin of East Pacific Rise

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

Together, they focused on the Gofar transform fault, located along the East Pacific Rise off Ecuador's western coast, in an effort to solve a decades-long mystery surrounding these repeating underwater earthquakes.

From Science Daily • May 16, 2026

Researchers at Hokkaido University, in collaboration with colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have been working on understanding microbial diversity at deep-sea hydrothermal environments on the East Pacific Rise based on microbe cultivation studies.

From Science Daily • Nov. 29, 2023

We had discovered a significant hydrothermal vent ecosystem on the East Pacific Rise.

From Scientific American • Jul. 19, 2022

Along divergent boundaries like the mid- Atlantic ridge and the East Pacific Rise, earthquakes are common, but restricted to a narrow zone close to the ridge, and consistently at less than 30 km depth.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

As North America slowly crept westward away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Wilson says, the west coast of the continent eventually met up with another segment of the ridge system called the East Pacific Rise.

From Time Magazine Archive