Cocos plate facts for kids
The Cocos Plate is like a giant puzzle piece on Earth's surface. It's a young tectonic plate found under the Pacific Ocean. This plate is located off the west coast of Central America. The famous Cocos Island sits right on top of it.
Contents
What is a Tectonic Plate?
Earth's outer layer is broken into huge pieces called tectonic plates. These plates are always moving, but very slowly. They can crash into each other, pull apart, or slide past each other. This movement causes things like earthquakes and volcanoes.
Where is the Cocos Plate?
The Cocos Plate is an oceanic plate. This means it is mostly under the ocean. You can find it beneath the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is just west of countries in Central America, like Costa Rica and Panama.
How the Cocos Plate Formed
The Cocos Plate is quite new in Earth's long history. It formed about 23 million years ago. Before that, it was part of a much larger plate. This bigger plate broke into two main pieces. One piece became the Cocos Plate. The other piece is now called the Nazca Plate. Later, the Cocos Plate itself also split. This created a smaller plate known as the Rivera Plate.
Neighbors of the Cocos Plate
The Cocos Plate is surrounded by several other plates. To its northeast, it meets the North American Plate and the Caribbean Plate. To its west, it touches the huge Pacific Plate. To the south, it borders the Nazca Plate. This busy area of interacting plates is very interesting to scientists.
What Happens at the Edges?
The way these plates interact is called the Cocos-Nazca spreading system. Along its eastern edge, the Cocos Plate is diving underneath other plates. This process is called subduction. When one plate goes under another, it can cause a lot of activity. This subduction is responsible for creating the Central American Volcanic Arc. This arc is a chain of volcanoes found along the coast of Central America.
The Cocos Plate is also close to the Galapagos hotspot. A hotspot is a place where hot rock rises from deep inside Earth. This hotspot helped to form the famous Galápagos Islands.
See also
In Spanish: Placa de Cocos para niños
