The Chile fracture zone (CFZ) is a major

strike slip fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

and

fracture zone A fracture zone is a linear feature on the ocean floor—often hundreds, even thousands of kilometers long—resulting from the action of offset mid-ocean ridge axis segments. They are a consequence of plate tectonics. Lithospheric plates on eit ...

in the

Chile Rise The Chile Ridge, also known as the Chile Rise, is a submarine oceanic ridge formed by the divergent plate boundary between the Nazca plate and the Antarctic plate. It extends from the triple junction of the Nazca, Pacific, and Antarctic plates ...

. The Chile Fracture Zone runs in an eastwest direction almost parallel to nearby

Juan Fernández Ridge The Juan Fernández Ridge is a volcanic island and seamount chain on the Nazca plate. It runs for about in a west–east direction from the Juan Fernández hotspot to the Peru–Chile Trench between the latitudes of 32-34° S before subducting ...

and makes up a large part of the

Antarctic The Antarctic (, ; commonly ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the South Pole, lying within the Antarctic Circle. It is antipodes, diametrically opposite of the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antar ...

—

Nazca plate The Nazca plate or Nasca plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic list of tectonic plates, tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru– ...

boundary. It was discovered by

HMS Challenger Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS ''Challenger'', most famously the fifth, the survey vessel that carried the ''Challenger'' expedition from 1872 to 1876. * The first was a 16-gun brig-sloop launched in 1806 that the French ca ...

References

External links

* Fracture zones Seismic faults of Chile {{Tectonics-stub

See also

References

External links