Antarctic plate in the context of "African Plate"

The African plate, also known as the Nubian plate, is a major tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Africa (except for its easternmost part) and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It also includes a narrow strip of Western Asia along the Mediterranean Sea, including much of Israel and Lebanon. It is bounded by the North American plate and South American plate to the west (separated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge); the Arabian plate and Somali plate to the east; the Eurasian plate, Aegean Sea plate and Anatolian plate to the north; and the Antarctic plate to the south.

Between 60 million years ago and 10 million years ago, the Somali plate began rifting from the African plate along the East African Rift. Since the continent of Africa consists of crust from both the African and the Somali plates, some literature refers to the African plate as the Nubian plate to distinguish it from the continent as a whole.

The South American plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African plate, with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

The easterly edge is a divergent boundary with the African plate; the southerly edge is a complex boundary with the Antarctic plate, the Scotia plate, and the Sandwich Plate; the westerly edge is a convergent boundary with the subducting Nazca plate; and the northerly edge is a boundary with the Caribbean plate and the oceanic crust of the North American plate. At the Chile triple junction, near the west coast of the Taitao–Tres Montes Peninsula, an oceanic ridge known as the Chile Rise is actively subducting under the South American plate.

The Bouvet triple junction is a geologic triple junction of three tectonic plates located on the seafloor of the South Atlantic Ocean. It is named after Bouvet Island, which lies about 250 km (160 mi) to the east. The three plates which meet here are the South American plate, the African plate, and the Antarctic plate. The Bouvet triple junction although it appears to be a R-R-R type, that is, the three plate boundaries which meet here as mid-ocean ridges: the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR), the Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR), and the South American-Antarctic Ridge (SAAR) is actually slightly more complex and in transition.

The Scotia plate (Spanish: Placa Scotia) is a minor tectonic plate on the edge of the South Atlantic and Southern oceans. Thought to have formed during the late Eocene with the opening of the Drake Passage that separates Antarctica and South America, it is a minor plate whose movement is largely controlled by the two major plates that surround it: the Antarctic plate and the South American plate. The Scotia plate takes its name from the steam yacht Scotia of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902–04), the expedition that made the first bathymetric study of the region.

Roughly rhomboid, extending between 50°S 70°W / 50°S 70°W / -50; -70 and 63°S 20°W / 63°S 20°W / -63; -20, the plate is 800 km (500 mi) wide and 3,000 km (1,900 mi) long. It is moving WSW at 2.2 cm (0.87 in)/year and the South Sandwich plate is moving east at 5.5 cm (2.2 in)/year in an absolute reference frame. Its boundaries are defined by the East Scotia Ridge, the North Scotia Ridge, the South Scotia Ridge, and the Shackleton fracture zone.

The South Sandwich plate or the Sandwich plate (not to be confused with a culinary sandwich plate) is a small tectonic plate (microplate) bounded by the subducting South American plate to the east, the Antarctic plate to the south, and the Scotia plate to the west. The plate is separated from the Scotia plate by the East Scotia Rise, a back-arc spreading ridge formed by the subduction zone on its eastern margin. The South Sandwich Islands are located on this microplate.

The initiation of the South Sandwich subduction zone, a convergent plate margin, began around 66 million years ago in response to regional convergence of the Antarctic and South American tectonic plates. Gradual extension of the Scotia Sea and subduction roll back of South American oceanic lithosphere created the ancestral Scotia plate. The South Sandwich Microplate separated from the Scotia plate around 15 million years ago as a back arc basin formed with development of the East Scotia Rise. There is continued debate over the reason for the separation of the South Sandwich plate from the Scotia plate. Two primary mechanisms have been proposed, subducting slab roll back and absolute motion of the Scotia plate away from the trench. A combination of these two mechanisms could also contribute to the current plate boundary configurations.

The Nazca plate or Nasca plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Nazca plate under the South American plate is largely responsible for the Andean orogeny. The Nazca plate is bounded on the west by the Pacific plate and to the south by the Antarctic plate through the East Pacific Rise and the Chile Rise, respectively. The movement of the Nazca plate over several hotspots has created some volcanic islands as well as east–west running seamount chains that subduct under South America. Nazca is a relatively young plate in terms of the age of its rocks and its existence as an independent plate, having been formed from the breakup of the Farallon plate about 23 million years ago. The oldest rocks of the plate are about 50 million years old.