Scotia 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 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 Shackleton fracture zone (SFZ) is an undersea fracture zone, oceanic ridge and fault located in the Drake Passage, at the separation between the Scotia plate from the Antarctic plate. It extends between 59° and 60°40' south latitude and between 56°30' and 61° west longitude and runs in a northwest to southeast direction from the South American continental shelf to the South Shetland Islands.Chile claims the area as part of its Outer Continental Shelf boundary.

The name, recognized by the Advisory Committee on Underwater Features (ACUF) since June 1987, is named after the British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922).

55°25′44″S 26°11′29″W / 55.42889°S 26.19139°W / -55.42889; -26.19139

The South Sandwich Trench is a deep arcuate trench in the South Atlantic Ocean lying 100 kilometres (62 mi) to the east of the South Sandwich Islands. It is the deepest trench of the Southern Atlantic Ocean, and the second-deepest of the Atlantic Ocean after the Puerto Rico Trench. Since the trench extends south of the 60th parallel south, it also contains the deepest point in the Southern Ocean.