Pacific Plate - wikipedia Pacific Plate Pacific Plate Type Major Approximate area 103,300,000 km ( 39,900,000 sq mi ) Movement north - west Speed 56 -- 102 mm ( 2.2 -- 4.0 in ) / year Features Baja California, Hawaii, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean Relative to the African Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At 103 million square kilometres ( 40,000,000 sq mi ), it is the largest tectonic plate. The Pacific Plate contains an interior hot spot forming the Hawaiian Islands. Hillis and Müller are reported to consider the Bird 's Head Plate to be moving in unison with the Pacific Plate. Bird considers them to be unconnected. Contents 1 Boundaries 2 Paleo - geology of the Pacific Plate 3 References 4 External links Boundaries The north - eastern side is a divergent boundary with the Explorer Plate, the Juan de Fuca Plate and the Gorda Plate forming respectively the Explorer Ridge, the Juan de Fuca Ridge and the Gorda Ridge. In the middle of the eastern side is a transform boundary with the North American Plate along the San Andreas Fault, and a boundary with the Cocos Plate. The south - eastern side is a divergent boundary with the Nazca Plate forming the East Pacific Rise. The southern side is a divergent boundary with the Antarctic Plate forming the Pacific - Antarctic Ridge. The western side, the plate is bounded by the Okhotsk Plate at the Kuril - Kamchatka Trench and the Japan Trench, forms a convergent boundary by subducting under the Philippine Sea Plate creating the Mariana Trench, has a transform boundary with the Caroline Plate, and has a collision boundary with the North Bismarck Plate. In the south - west, the Pacific Plate has a complex but generally convergent boundary with the Indo - Australian Plate, subducting under it north of New Zealand forming the Tonga Trench and the Kermadec Trench. The Alpine Fault marks a transform boundary between the two plates, and further south the Indo - Australian Plate subducts under the Pacific Plate forming the Puysegur Trench. The southern part of Zealandia, which is to the east of this boundary, is the plate 's largest block of continental crust. The northern side is a convergent boundary subducting under the North American Plate forming the Aleutian Trench and the corresponding Aleutian Islands. Paleo - geology of the Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is almost entirely oceanic crust, but it contains some continental crust in New Zealand, Baja California, and coastal California. The Pacific Plate has the distinction of showing one of the largest areal sections of the oldest members of seabed geology being entrenched into eastern Asian oceanic trenches. A geologic map of the Pacific Ocean seabed shows not only the geologic sequences, and associated Ring of Fire zones on the ocean 's perimeters, but the various ages of the seafloor in a stairstep fashion, youngest to oldest, the oldest being consumed into the Asian oceanic trenches. The oldest member disappearing by way of the Plate Tectonics cycle 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, only about 1 / 30 of the Earth 's 4.55 billion year history. References Jump up ^ http://geology.about.com/library/bl/blplate_size_table.htm Jump up ^ `` SFT and the Earth 's Tectonic Plates ''. Los Alamos National Laboratory. Retrieved 27 February 2013. ^ Jump up to : Frisch, Wolfgang ; Meschede, Martin ; Blakey, Ronald C. ( 2010 ), Plate Tectonics : Continental Drift and Mountain Building, Springer, pp. 11 -- 12, ISBN 9783540765042. Jump up ^ Hillis, R.R. ; Müller, R.D. ( 2003 ). Evolution and Dynamics of the Australian Plate. Boulder, CO : Geological Society of America. p. 363. ISBN 0 - 8137 - 2372 - 8. Jump up ^ Bird, P. ( 2003 ). `` An updated digital model of plate boundaries ''. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 4 ( 3 ) : 1027. doi : 10.1029 / 2001GC000252. http://peterbird.name/publications/2003_PB2002/2003_PB2002.htm. Jump up ^ Age of the Ocean Floor External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pacific tectonic plate. Age of the Ocean Floor Tectonic plates Major African Indo - Australian Plate Antarctic Eurasian North American Pacific South American Minor Amurian Arabian Caribbean Caroline Cocos Juan de Fuca Nazca Okhotsk Philippine Scotia Somali Yangtze Other Adriatic Aegean Sea Anatolian Australian Balmoral Reef Banda Sea Bird 's Head Burma Capricorn Conway Reef Easter Explorer Futuna Galapagos Gonâve Gorda Greenland Halmahera Iberian Indian Iranian Juan Fernández Kerguelen Kermadec Madagascar Manus Maoke Mariana Molucca Sea New Hebrides Niuafo'ou North Andes North Bismarck North Galapagos Nubian Okinawa Panama Pelso Philippine Mobile Belt Rivera Sangihe Seychelles Shetland Solomon Sea South Bismarck South Sandwich Sunda Timor Tisza Tonga Woodlark Historical Baltic Bellingshausen Charcot Cimmeria Farallon Insular Intermontane Izanagi Kula Lhasa Malvinas Moa Phoenix List of tectonic plates Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pacific_Plate&oldid=804856284 '' Categories : Tectonic plates Geological history of Earth Geology of the Pacific Ocean Natural history of North America Natural history of Hawaii Natural history of Oceania Natural history of Japan Geology of the Russian Far East Geology of California Geology of New Zealand Hidden categories : All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from December 2014 Talk Contents About Wikipedia Azərbaycanca Беларуская Беларуская ( тарашкевіца ) ‎ Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch Eesti Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Galego 한국어 हिन्दी Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית Kiswahili Lietuvių Magyar Bahasa Melayu Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Norsk nynorsk Occitan Polski Português Русский Scots Simple English Slovenčina Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Svenska ไทย Türkçe Українська Tiếng Việt 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 11 October 2017, at 15 : 25. 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Question: what type of plate boundary separates the pacific plate from the north american plate
Answer: a transform boundary