Kula Plate

Plate distribution 64–74 Ma (Black represents present-day land area)

The Kula Plate was an oceanic tectonic plate under the northern Pacific Ocean south of the Near Islands segment of the Aleutian Islands. It has been subducted under the North American Plate at the Aleutian Trench, being replaced by the Pacific Plate.

The name Kula is from a Tlingit language word meaning "all gone".[1] As the name suggests, the Kula Plate was entirely subducted around 48 Ma and today only a slab in the mantle under the Bering Sea remains.[2] There is some evidence of a Resurrection Plate broken off from the Kula Plate and also subducted.[3][4]

  1. ^ p. 145 Archived March 2, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Gorbatov, A.; Widiyantoro, S.; Fukao, Y.; Gordeev, E. (2000). "Signature of remnant slabs in the North Pacific from P-wave tomography" (PDF). Geophysical Journal International. 142 (1): 27–36. Bibcode:2000GeoJI.142...27G. doi:10.1046/j.1365-246X.2000.00122.x. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  3. ^ Haeussler, Peter J.; Bradley, Dwight C.; Wells, Ray E.; Miller, Marti L. (2003-07-01). "Life and death of the Resurrection plate: Evidence for its existence and subduction in the northeastern Pacific in Paleocene–Eocene time". GSA Bulletin. 115 (7): 867–880. Bibcode:2003GSAB..115..867H. doi:10.1130/0016-7606(2003)115<0867:LADOTR>2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0016-7606.
  4. ^ Nield, David (21 October 2020). "A Controversial Lost Tectonic Plate May Have Been Discovered by Geologists". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 2020-10-23.