Off the coast of Nicaragua, beneath the Cocos tectonic plate, researchers discovered a 15-mile-thick (25 kilometers) layer of partially melted rock at the bottom of the lithosphere.

If you just count the major and minor plates as tectonic plates, that would bring the total up to 15. But before we get too comfy with that total, there’s a new kid in town – the microplate .

The gradual sliding of tectonic plates across the Earth’s surface may be lubricated by a layer of partial melting, according to researchers from the US. Their study involved conducting magnetotelluric ...

A team of researchers from Rice University in Texas have discovered a new tectonic plate off the coast of Ecuador. There were 56 plates; now, there ... the Pacific plate is met by Cocos and Nazca.

The 8.2 magnitude earthquake that brought devastation and 98 deaths to southern Mexico in September 2017 was even more extreme than initially thought — it split the tectonic plate re… ...

Researchers found a hole in the mantle layer of Earth in the Cocos tectonic plate, which lies right off the coast of Panama. Shown here, a 3D rendering of a topographic map of Panama.

A team of scientists has observed past episodic intraplate magmatism and corroborated the existence of a partial melt channel at the base of the Cocos Plate. Situated 60 kilometers beneath the ...

Now, a new study co-authored by Key appears to confirm the boundary zone is molten magma, at least under the ocean floor. Off the coast of Nicaragua, beneath the Cocos tectonic plate, researchers ...

The Malpelo Plate Hypothesis and Implications for Non-closure of the Cocos-Nazca-Pacific Plate Motion Circuit. Geophysical Research Letters , 2017; DOI: 10.1002/2017GL073704 Cite This Page : ...

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world's most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents ...

Mexico sits at the boundary of three tectonic plates: the Cocos plate, the North American plate, and the Pacific plate. Map by the US Geological Survey.

New plate adds plot twist to ancient tectonic tale ... That made the Pacific-Cocos-Nazca circuit a misfit, which meant at least one other plate in the vicinity had to make up the difference.