Pacific plate

     The Pacific plate, shown in pale yellow

The Pacific plate

The Pacific plate is a tectonic plate beneath parts of the Pacific Ocean.

• It is the largest tectonic plate (103 million square kilometers)
• It includes the hot spot which formed the Hawaiian Islands

Note the Ring of Fire zones on the ocean's edges. The oldest seafloor is destroyed by going down into the Asian oceanic trenches. The oldest part disappearing this way is early Cretaceous (145 to 137 million years ago).

All maps of the Earth's ocean floor geology show ages younger than 145 million years. This is only about 1/30 of the Earth's 4.55 billion year history.

Pacific Plate Media

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  Pacific Plate and other principal plates of Earth's lithosphere

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  The Pacific Plate began forming when the triple junction at the center of Panthalassa destabilized about 190 million years ago.