The Panama fracture zone is a major, active right lateral-moving

transform fault A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault (geology), fault along a plate boundary where the motion (physics), motion is predominantly Horizontal plane, horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either an ...

and associated inactive

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 ...

which forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Cocos plate and the

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– ...

, the

Cocos–Nazca spreading centre The Cocos–Nazca spreading centre (CNSC, Cocos–Nazca spreading system) is the divergent boundary between the Cocos and Nazca plates. It extends from close to the East Pacific Rise northwest of the Galápagos Islands, to the southeastern end o ...

. It is part of the

triple junction A triple junction is the point where the boundaries of three tectonic plates meet. At the triple junction each of the three boundaries will be one of three types – a ridge (R), trench (T) or transform fault (F) – and triple junctions can be ...

between the Cocos plate, Nazca plate and Caribbean plate which is moving in the southeastern direction at 5.5 cm/yr. The active transform section runs from the Costa Rica Rise to the

Middle America Trench The Middle America Trench is a major subduction zone, an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the southwestern coast of Middle America, stretching from central Mexico to Costa Rica. The trench is 1,700 miles (2,750 km) long an ...

References

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External links

* Fracture zones Geology of Panama {{tectonics-stub