North American plate
The North American plate is a tectonic plate containing most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of, it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific plate.
It extends eastward to the seismically active Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the Azores triple junction plate boundary where it meets the Eurasian plate and Nubian plate.
and westward to the Chersky Range in eastern Siberia. The plate includes both continental and oceanic crust. The interior of the main continental landmass includes an extensive granitic core called a craton. Along most of the edges of this craton are fragments of crustal material called terranes, which are accreted to the craton by tectonic actions over a long span of time. Much of North America west of the Rocky Mountains is composed of such terranes.
Boundaries
The southern boundary with the Cocos plate to the west and the Caribbean plate to the east is a transform fault, represented by the Swan Islands Transform Fault under the Caribbean Sea and the Motagua Fault through Guatemala. The parallel Septentrional and Enriquillo–Plantain Garden faults running through Hispaniola and bounding the Gonâve microplate, and the parallel Puerto Rico Trench running north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and bounding the Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate, are also a part of the boundary. The rest of the southerly margin which extends east to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and marks the boundary between the North American plate and the South American plate is vague but located near the Fifteen-Twenty fracture zone around 16°N.On the northerly boundary is a continuation of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge called the Gakkel Ridge. The rest of the boundary in the far northwestern part of the plate extends into Siberia and Northern Japan. This boundary continues from the end of the Gakkel Ridge as the Laptev Sea Rift, on to a transitional deformation zone in the Chersky Range, then the Ulakhan Fault between it and the Okhotsk microplate, and finally the Aleutian Trench to the end of the Queen Charlotte Fault system.
The westerly boundary is the Queen Charlotte Fault running offshore along the coast of Alaska and the Cascadia subduction zone to the north, the San Andreas Fault through California, the East Pacific Rise in the Gulf of California, and the Middle America Trench to the south.
On its western edge, the Farallon plate has been subducting under the North American plate since the Jurassic period. The Farallon plate has almost completely subducted beneath the western portion of the North American plate, leaving that part of the North American plate in contact with the Pacific plate as the San Andreas Fault. The Juan de Fuca, Explorer, Gorda, Rivera, Cocos and Nazca plates are remnants of the Farallon plate. The boundary along the Gulf of California is complex. The gulf is underlain by the Gulf of [California Rift Zone], a series of rift basins and transform fault segments from the northern end of the East Pacific Rise in the mouth of the gulf to the San Andreas Fault system in the vicinity of the Salton Trough rift/Brawley seismic zone. It is generally accepted that a piece of the North American plate was broken off and transported north as the East Pacific Rise propagated northward, creating the Gulf of California. However, it is as yet unclear whether the oceanic crust between the rise and the mainland coast of Mexico is actually a new plate beginning to converge with the North American plate, consistent with the standard model of rift zone spreading centers generally.
Two major islands of the Azores, Flores and Corvo, lie on the eastern edge of the North American plate, just west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and near the Azores triple junction. The other major islands of the Azores lie on the African or Eurasian plates.