Talk:List of tectonic plates/Archive 1

Untitled
Now here's a sensible list. There are two kinds of useful list. one is a complete list like this one. The other is a selective list. Wetman 19:27, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Australian / Indian plates
I have redirected Australian Plate and Indian Plate to Indo-Australian Plate. I haven't changed pages linking to these two pages as yet, in case someone wants to write separate pages - I thought I would leave it to someone who knows what they are talking about! But in the meantime at least the reader will find the most relevant information on wikipedia, rather than a blank page. -- Chuq 03:51, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Probably a good idea. Some literature refers to the plates separately, whereas, other literature refers to them as combined. Looking at the earthquake distribution map shows an extremely weak separation and thus an explanation. I see that the map has been resized downward which I can understand, however, this substantially reduces the visability of the connection between the earthquake distribution and the plate boundaries. I realize the map can be blown up by clicking on it but it's having the earthquake map and the plate map side by side that provides the real picture. Perhaps, a better visualization could be obtained by enlarging the earthquake map somewhat and placing both maps side by side at the bottom of the page. It would also help if some clever person could make the maps align. The left boundary of the earthquake map is 180 degrees west longitude basically the International Date Line, whereas, the left boundary of the plate map is further to the west.

Reference
Hi. Both links to the reference (HTML/PDF) do not work. Either the link has changed (and therefore needs fixing by whoever can find it) or they took it off. --Thogo (Talk) 22:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, found it myself and fixed it. --Thogo (Talk) 06:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Confusing part
Can anyone (with enough knowledge of this topic) re-write the next phrase to make it more clear?

"There may or may not be scientific consensus as to whether a tertiary plate is a separate plate yet, is still a separate plate, or should be considered a separate plate, thus new research could change this list."

To me, "is a separate plate yet" and "is still a separate plate" are the same thing.George Rodney Maruri Game (talk) 02:17, 28 January 2011 (UTC)


 * No, it's not the same. The difference is if a plate is *already* or *still* a separate plate, so if it is in the state of birth or death, so to speak. ;) But you're right, the wording is not optimal... I'll guess of something better. What about "In some cases there is no scientific consensus as to whether or not a tertiary plate should be already or still considered a separate plate, thus new research could change this list." ? --Thogo (Talk) 17:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much, Thogo! English is not my native language but I use quite a lot at work. So, I apologize if I am taking too much from your time. From your explanation I distinguish 3 situations:
 * "it is a separate plate yet" = it is the end of a separate plate, it is about to disappear
 * "it is still a separate plate" = it is the beginning of the formation of a separate plate
 * "it is a separate plate" = it is currently a stable separate plate
 * Please, correct me if my understanding is wrong. Thanks again! George Rodney Maruri Game (talk) 19:29, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, in the meantime this phrase has been changed into: "There may be scientific consensus as to whether such plates should be considered distinct portions of the crust; thus new research could change this list." Some information in the previous versions may have been lost by this changes, i.e. the information about phases in a plate's life.

The new version is especially confusing because "there may be scientific consensus" is non-information; I wonder if actually, "there may not be scientific consensus" was meant. Bever (talk) 15:26, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Indian Plate, secondary or tertiary?
Is the Indian Plate a secondary or tertiary plate? It is certainly as big (and, in a number of cases, bigger) than some of the secondary plates. What is it that defines a plate as "secondary" or "tertiary"? ask123 (talk) 05:19, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Major and minor definitions
The Indian Plate and the Somali Plate had somehow been left off this list, so I added them. But they didn't really fit into the (arbitrary) ranges for major and minor specified in the list. So I changed the list ranges: major plates are > 20,000,000 km2 and minor plates are between 20,000,000 km2 and 1,000,000 km2. (The rest are considered microplates on this list, and I haven't even looked at the past plates yet.) I'm hoping to review the literature and get an idea of the ways they're classified by geoscientists these days. But I have very limited access to substantial geoscience material; I'm hoping others will chime in here with what they've seen.— Gorthian (talk) 20:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Our article certainly matches the range of numbers of major plates you can find in the literature. Our major plates list in the article gives 7 (or 8 if you split the Indian from the Australian), you can also find examples with 10, 14 and 15 (as in the USGS map also used in the article). Obviously the cut-off will be arbitrary, but we need to stick to one I think (suitably cited), while discussing the range. I would use the USGS major plates personally, although I know that some of these have much smaller areas than 20,000,000 km2. Mikenorton (talk) 20:31, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Examples of sources for each, some better than others -
 * 7
 * 8
 * 10
 * 12
 * 14 based on De Mets 1990
 * 15 "dozen or so", but shows 15
 * so pick a number. Mikenorton (talk) 21:52, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Continental or oceanic
Some plates are almost completely oceanic (the Pacific one), other continental (have predominantly continental crust), other have both types of crust. Information in the list about this would be nice, in my opinion. Bever (talk) 15:27, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

More plates
The areas on the list add to 526.2 million km² (for an earth of 510.1 million km²). I suspect the Nazca plate is included in the Pacific Plate -> 510.6 (when not counted); but the Somali (and the rest of the minors) are needed to reach 510.6m km². (Still a bit over.). MBG02 (talk) 01:01, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The Nazca Plate "lost" some of its territory to the newly defined Malpelo and Coiba Plates. I think the areas need to be recalculated to the new boundaries of various plates and are still a relic of earlier definitions. Tisquesusa (talk) 01:05, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Mismatch between map and list
The map labels 15 major plates - there are not that number in the list of major plates in the article - in fact only 7 or 8. Also why is the Nazca plate not on the 'major' list - it appears on just about every map of plates I can recall seeing. The 'components' section is curious - what exactly is it for - it could do with some explanation. And I don't know about the definition of continent given here since, in the tectonic context, large parts of continents can be covered by water and so are not landmass eg the North Sea. It's all rather arbitrary - where are the references that support the breakdown as it currently appears on this page? cheers Geopersona (talk) 19:28, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Can we use the plural when referring to multiple plates?
There is historic, psychological motivation to minimize the number of recognized plates (see the Indo-Australian "plate"), but the Microplates section is too strained with its use in subheads of the singular, Plate, when listing a few, and sometimes many, Plates. Bob Enyart, Denver KGOV radio host (talk) 14:12, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Adding to 510 million
Table for what I said above (Sep 2018).

(Surface area of Earth is 510.1 million km²).

MBG02 (talk) 20:21, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Other planets?
Just on Earth?

MBG02 (talk) 20:21, 11 July 2019 (UTC)