| Coiba plate | |
|---|---|
 Coiba plate in dark red, Malpelo plate in purple CTF in green, PTF in red | |
| Type | Micro |
| Coordinates | 06°41′N80°04′W / 6.683°N 80.067°W /6.683; -80.067 |
| Movement1 | East |
| Features | Bordering: Panama plate (north) North Andes plate (east) Malpelo plate (south) Cocos plate (west) Basins: Chocó Offshore Basin Colombian Deep Pacific Basin |
| 1Relative to theAfrican plate | |
TheCoiba plate is asmall tectonic plate (microplate) located off the coasts south ofPanama and northwesternColombia. It is named afterCoiba, the largest island of Central America, just north of the plate offshore southern Panama. It is bounded on the west by theCocos plate, on the south by theMalpelo plate, on the east by theNorth Andes plate, and on the north by thePanama plate. This microplate was previously assumed to be part of the Nazca Plate, forming the northeastern tongue of the Nazca plate together with the Malpelo plate. Bordering the Coiba plate on the east are the north–southstrikingBahía Solano Fault and east of that, theSerranía de Baudó, an isolated mountain chain in northwesternChocó, Colombia.
The Coiba plate was identified as early as 1981 by Pennington, and later in 1988 by Adamek et al.[1] It is named afterCoiba, to the south of mainland Panama, bordering the plate. It was presented together with the newly defined Malpelo plate byTuo Zhang and lead-researcherRichard G. Gordon et al. ofRice University in a paper published in August 2017.[1] TheCoiba transform fault (CTF) separates the Coiba plate from the Malpelo plate. The slab tear between the microplates could have happened during the fragmentation of theFarallon plate, in theOligocene, around 30 to 25 Ma.[2] The Coiba Ridge, a submerged part of the plate probably formed at theGalápagos hotspot, in contrast with theMalpelo Ridge, a product of volcanic activity.[3]
The researchers led by Gordon used aColumbia University database of multibeamsonar soundings west of Ecuador and Colombia to identify a diffuseplate boundary that runs from thePanama transform fault (PTF) eastward.[1]
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| Sources | Paris, Gabriel; Machette, Michael N.; Dart, Richard L.; Haller, Kathleen M. (2000).Map and Database of Quaternary Faults and Folds in Colombia and its Offshore Regions(PDF).USGS. pp. 1–66. Retrieved2017-06-20. Gómez Tapias, Jorge; Montes Ramírez, Nohora E.; Almanza Meléndez, María F.; Alcárcel Gutiérrez, Fernando A.; Madrid Montoya, César A.; Diederix, Hans (2015).Geological Map of Colombia.Servicio Geológico Colombiano. pp. 1–212. Retrieved2019-10-29. Various authors (2014).Enciclopedia de desastres naturales históricos de Colombia(PDF).Universidad del Quindío. pp. 1–21. Retrieved2017-06-20. | ||||||||||
