Phoenix Plate

The Phoenix Plate (also known as the Aluk Plate) was an ancient tectonic plate that existed during the mid-Cretaceous through early Cenozoic time. The Phoenix Plate began subducting under the Antarctic Plate. The Phoenix Ridge, a mid-oceanic ridge between the Pacific and the Phoenix Plates which had a spreading rate of 18-20 cm per year until around 84 Ma. A major decrease in spreading rate, and the convergence rate with the Antarctic Plate occurred around 52.3 Ma. During the Late Cretaceous, the Phoenix Plate fragmented into the Charcot Plate, much in the same way in which the Rivera and the Cocos Plate were formed by the fragmentation of the Farallon Plate.

References

• McCarron, Joe J. and Robert D. Larter, Late Cretaceous to early Tertiary subduction history of the Antarctic Peninsula, Journal of the Geological Society, March 1998

Tectonic plates Major African Australian Antarctic Eurasian Indian North American Pacific South American Minor Arabian Caribbean Cocos Juan de Fuca Nazca Philippine Scotia Other Adriatic Aegean Sea Altiplano Amurian Anatolian Balmoral Reef Banda Sea Bird's Head Burma Capricorn Caroline Conway Reef Easter Explorer Falklands Futuna Galapagos Gonâve Gorda Greenland Halmahera Iberian Iranian Juan Fernández Kerguelen Kermadec Kula Madagascar Manus Maoke Mariana Molucca Sea New Hebrides Niuafo'ou North Andes North Bismarck North Galapagos Nubian Okhotsk Okinawa Panama Pelso Philippine Mobile Belt Rivera Sangihe Seychelles Shetland Solomon Sea Somali South Bismarck South Sandwich Sri Lanka Sunda Timor Tisza Tonga Woodlark Yangtze Historical Baltic Bellingshausen Charcot Cimmerian Farallon Indo-Australian Insular Intermontane Izanagi Lhasa Moa Phoenix List of tectonic plates