North American Plate

[nawrth uh-mer-i-kuhn pleyt]

noun

Geology, Oceanography.

1. a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising Greenland and the continent of North America and the suboceanic Labrador and North American Basins, and bounded on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the south by the Caribbean and South American Plates, and on the west by the San Andreas Fault and the Aleutian Trench.

Word History and Origins

Origin of North American Plate¹

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

To better understand these deep events, the team examined seismic data from the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest, where the Juan de Fuca plate is sliding beneath the North American plate.

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Japan is an archipelago, a cluster of islands that sit on a particularly active spot in the tectonic neighborhood, where a thin finger of the North American Plate extends down between the Eurasian and Pacific Plates.

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There, the Pacific Plate slides beneath the North American Plate in what’s known as a subduction fault.

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Over time, the movement of the Pacific Plate pulls the North American Plate downward, like the bucket of a catapult that is being readied to fire.

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At 2:46 P.M. on March 11, an area of the North American Plate about 190 miles long broke free from the Pacific Plate.

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