Nazca plate in the context of "South American Plate"

The Antarctic plate is a tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and some remote islands in the Southern Ocean and other surrounding oceans. After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to its present isolated location, causing the continent to develop a much colder climate. The Antarctic plate is bounded almost entirely by extensional mid-ocean ridge systems. The adjoining plates are the Nazca plate, the South American plate, the African plate, the Somali plate, the Indo-Australian plate, the Pacific plate, and, across a transform boundary, the Scotia and South Sandwich plates.

The Antarctic plate has an area of about 60,900,000 km (23,500,000 sq mi). It is Earth's fifth-largest tectonic plate.

The Caribbean plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America.

Roughly 3.2 million square kilometres (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean plate borders the North American plate, the South American plate, the Nazca plate and the Cocos plate. These borders are regions of intense seismic activity, including frequent earthquakes, occasional tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

The Chile triple junction (or Chile margin triple junction) is a geologic triple junction located on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean off Taitao and Tres Montes Peninsula on the southern coast of Chile. Here three tectonic plates meet: the South American plate, the Nazca plate and the Antarctic plate. This triple junction is unusual in that it consists of a mid-oceanic ridge, the Chile Rise, being subducted under the South American plate at the Peru–Chile Trench. The Chile triple junction is the boundary between the Chilean Rise and the Chilean margin, where the Nazca, Antarctic, and South American plates meet at the trench.

The Chile Ridge, also known as the Chile Rise, is a submarine oceanic ridge formed by the divergent plate boundary between the Nazca plate and the Antarctic plate. It extends from the triple junction of the Nazca, Pacific, and Antarctic plates to the Southern coast of Chile. The Chile Ridge is easy to recognize on the map, as the ridge is divided into several segmented fracture zones which are perpendicular to the ridge segments, showing an orthogonal shape toward the spreading direction. The total length of the ridge segments is about 550–600 km (340–370 mi; 300–320 nmi).

The continuously spreading Chile Ridge collides with the southern South American plate to the east, and the ridge has been subducting underneath the Taitao Peninsula since 14 million years (Ma). The ridge-collision has generated a slab window beneath the overlying South America plate, with smaller volume of upper mantle magma melt, proven by an abrupt low velocity of magma flow rate below the separating Chile ridge. The subduction generates a special type of igneous rocks, represented by the Taitao ophiolites, which is an ultramafic rock composed of olivine and pyroxene, usually found in oceanic plates. In addition, the subduction of the Chile Ridge also creates Taitao granite in Taitao Peninsula which appeared as plutons.

The Cocos plate is a young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America, named for Cocos Island, which rides upon it. The Cocos plate was created approximately 23 million years ago when the Farallon plate broke into two pieces, which also created the Nazca plate. The Cocos plate also broke into two pieces, creating the small Rivera plate. The Cocos plate is bounded to the northeast by the North American plate and the Caribbean plate. To the west it is bounded by the Pacific plate and to the south by the Nazca plate.

The only land above water on the Cocos plate is Cocos Island, which is administered by Costa Rica and lies approximately 550 km (342 mi; 297 nmi) southwest of the Costa Rican mainland.