Qualla: Malpelo Plate

Malpelo Plate: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tisquesusa, CC BY 4.0. In 2017, a team of geophysicists added another piece to the jigsaw puzzle of Earth's surface. The Malpelo plate became the 57th tectonic plate to be recognized, carved out of what had previously been assumed to be the northern edge of the Nazca plate. It takes its name from Malpelo Island - the only point on the plate that rises above the ocean, a bare black rock sitting in the middle of hundreds of kilometers of otherwise submerged crust. You will not see the plate from a boat or a plane. What you can see, from above Malpelo Island, is the one visible fleck of a piece of the world that scientists only recognized less than a decade ago.

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Image: Tisquesusa | CC BY 4.0

Malpelo Plate: The Arithmetic That Did Not Close

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grundkarte Milenioscuro, Relief Alexrk2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tectonic plates are measured by how they move. When researchers try to check whether the motion of three adjacent plates adds up - a plate motion circuit - the numbers should zero out. In the eastern Pacific, the Nazca-Cocos-Pacific circuit had long refused to close cleanly. A 20...

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Image: Grundkarte Milenioscuro, Relief Alexrk2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Malpelo Plate: A Microplate With a Big Neighborhood

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), modified by Alataristarion, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Malpelo plate is small on the scale of the planet but crowded on the scale of a map. The Cocos plate borders it to the west. The Nazca plate lies to the south. The North Andes plate forms its eastern edge, pressing against South America. To the north, across the Coiba transfo...

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Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), modified by Alataristarion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Malpelo Plate: Born in the Middle Miocene

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tisquesusa, CC BY 4.0. The oceanic crust of the Malpelo plate is estimated to have formed in the Middle Miocene, around 14.7 million years ago. For most of that time it has been moving quietly beneath the Pacific, manufactured somewhere along a spreading center and drifting toward its eventual fate at ...

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Image: Tisquesusa | CC BY 4.0

Malpelo Plate: Why It Matters to Know It Exists

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tisquesusa, CC BY 4.0. Microplates are not just a bookkeeping problem. Recognizing the Malpelo plate rewrites the seismic hazard picture for Pacific Colombia and Ecuador. Boundaries that were previously treated as features inside a single large Nazca plate turn out to separate distinct pieces of crust ...

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Image: Tisquesusa | CC BY 4.0