The Caribbean Plate is a chiefly oceanic tectonic plate occupying approximately 3.2 million km2 (1.2 million mi2) of lithosphere beneath the Caribbean Sea and parts of Central America, lying north of the South American continental margin. As a major structural element of the region’s crust, it forms the foundation for an array of island arcs and interfaces directly with adjacent continental margins, thereby exerting primary control on regional seafloor morphology and coastal-geologic relations.
This plate is bounded by the North American, South American, Nazca and Cocos plates, and these contacts constitute the principal tectonic framework for the region. Plate-boundary interactions along these margins are loci of heightened seismicity and episodic tsunami generation, and they also govern the distribution and activity of volcanic centers. Consequently, the Caribbean’s volcanoes and island-arc systems reflect ongoing plate dynamics and represent key components of both the region’s geomorphology and its geological hazard regime.
Boundary types — Caribbean Plate
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The northeastern sector of the Caribbean plate is characterized by a complex bathymetry in which the active Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc, an older inactive Greater Antilles arc (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola), the Muertos Trough, and the Puerto Rico Trench are proximal expressions of plate interaction. These features reflect the juxtaposition of transform faulting, oblique convergence and localized subduction along the plate margin.
The northern boundary with the North American plate is dominated by a long, primarily strike‑slip system that initiates in the Belize–Guatemala–Honduras region (including the Motagua Fault), continues through the Cayman Trough via the Swan Islands Transform Fault and Mid‑Cayman Rise, and is routed eastward across the Gonâve microplate by the Walton fault zone and the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone into eastern Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. This transform continuity accommodates lateral plate motion while interfacing with convergent structures to the east.
A segment of the plate boundary is occupied by the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest area of the Atlantic Ocean (~8,400 m). The trench marks a tectonic transition where downgoing North American lithosphere interacts obliquely with the Caribbean plate, producing a complex boundary in which subduction and transform regimes meet.
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The eastern margin is a true subduction zone where South American oceanic crust descends beneath the Caribbean plate, generating the Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc that extends from the Virgin Islands to islands off Venezuela. This arc hosts at least seventeen active volcanoes, notably Soufrière Hills (Montserrat), Mount Pelée (Martinique), La Grande Soufrière (Guadeloupe), Soufrière Saint Vincent, and the submarine vent Kick ’em Jenny north of Grenada. The subduction zone has also produced very large historical earthquakes, with major events in 1839 and 1843 interpreted as possible megathrust ruptures.
Along the southern margin, interaction with the South American plate is spatially heterogeneous: transform and thrust faulting coexist with localized subduction. This mosaic of deformation has produced islands such as Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago (both situated on the Caribbean plate) and the Leeward Antilles off the Venezuelan and Colombian coasts, and it plays a role in the structural trapping and migration pathways relevant to Venezuela’s petroleum accumulations.
Relative plate motion across the southern interface averages roughly 22 mm yr−1 eastward of the Caribbean plate with respect to South America. In Venezuela this differential motion is largely taken up by major strike‑slip and oblique faults, notably the Boconó, El Pilar and San Sebastián systems.
On the western margin the Caribbean plate underlies Central America where the Cocos plate subducts beneath it, producing the Central America Volcanic Arc and the active volcanism of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In regional context, the presently active Lesser Antilles arc is distinct from the older, inactive Greater Antilles arc, and bathymetric depressions such as the Muertos Trough record the complex interplay of subduction, transform slip and oblique convergence that defines the plate boundary system.
Two principal hypotheses compete to explain the origin of the Caribbean Plate. The long-standing, mainstream model invokes the Caribbean Large Igneous Province (CLIP) as a Pacific-derived terrane that formed tens of millions of years ago—possibly in association with the Galápagos hotspot—and subsequently translated eastward into its present position. In this scenario, progressive widening of the Atlantic drove North and South America westward and opened an intervening ocean basin in which Pacific oceanic lithosphere subducted. The CLIP, being anomalously thick and buoyant relative to normal oceanic crust, resisted subduction and instead overrode the downgoing slab, maintaining eastward drift relative to the westward-migrating continental plates until the closure of the Central American seaway; the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago severed the CLIP’s direct Pacific connection and isolated the Caribbean region.
A contrasting hypothesis, advanced in 2002, attributes the Caribbean’s origin to an extinct Atlantic hotspot and interprets plate-motion indicators as showing an absolute westward trajectory for the Caribbean Plate. The apparent eastward motion inferred in reconstructions fixed to North or South America can be a kinematic artifact: if those continental plates themselves moved west, a relatively eastward displacement of Caribbean lithosphere may mask a westward absolute motion. Thus the debate largely reduces to differences in reference frame and motion interpretation—relative-motion reconstructions have supported a Pacific CLIP origin, whereas absolute-motion analyses that indicate westward movement lend support to an Atlantic-hotspot origin. Resolving the origin therefore depends on reconciling absolute and relative plate-motion evidence and their implications for past hotspot associations and kinematic history.
First American land bridge
Beginning around 80 Ma in the Late Cretaceous, eastward motion of the Caribbean Plate generated an extensive volcanic island arc that curved from northwestern South America northward and westward toward the Yucatán; modern vestiges of this arc include the Aves Islands and the Lesser and Greater Antilles. That arc delineated the Caribbean Plate’s eastern and northern margins and, despite sustained tectonic activity and fluctuating sea levels, persisted as a structural feature until the mid‑Eocene. Intermittent emergence of arc segments during this interval produced transient land surfaces along those plate boundaries.
A comparatively narrow but significant interval in the Late Paleocene (ca. 58.5–56.5 Ma) saw the confluence of two geomorphic drivers—regional fall in relative sea level and uplift of the Andean (western) margin of South America—that together created a continuous terrestrial corridor across parts of the volcanic arc. Local tectonism of the arc system interacted with these drivers to produce episodic exposures and inundations of corridor landforms; such episodes of connection and isolation continued sporadically until the mid‑Eocene. Throughout this time the block that later became Central America remained a Pacific‑side, western‑boundary element and thus was largely isolated from eastern arc connections, implying prolonged Pacific isolation for proto‑Central America while the Caribbean arc governed eastward linkages.
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The temporary land bridge evidently had biogeographic effects consistent with limited south–north vertebrate dispersal: Paleocene–Eocene records interpreted as xenarthrans, didelphid marsupials, and large flightless phorusrhacids in northern locales, and the occurrence of the marsupial genus Peradectes in Paleocene South America, have been advanced as evidence for interchange. Some of these taxonomic assignments remain contested, however. Integrating the plate‑kinematic history (eastward migration from 80 Ma), the longevity of the volcanic arc (until the mid‑Eocene), and the narrow Late Paleocene low‑stand/uplift window (58.5–56.5 Ma) highlights how plate motions, island‑arc volcanism, sea‑level change, and Andean uplift combined to produce episodic terrestrial corridors that plausibly facilitated limited mammalian exchanges between South and North America.
Great American Interchange
The Great American Interchange was a major biogeographical episode in which terrestrial and freshwater organisms dispersed reciprocally between the North and South American continents after a continuous terrestrial corridor formed along the uplifted western margin of the Caribbean plate (modern Central America). The emergence of this corridor converted formerly separated landmasses into a contiguous land bridge and associated freshwater pathways, permitting overland and riverine dispersal that excluded most marine taxa.
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Paleobiogeographically, the interchange is a relatively late event, attaining its most pronounced phase near 2.6 million years ago (Piacenzian, late Pliocene). This interval saw an intense, rapid transfer of taxa in both directions, producing a substantial reshuffling of species ranges and community composition across the two continents.
Spatially and taxonomically, the phenomenon involved North America, South America, and the uplifted Central American segment of the Caribbean plate, with the principal movers being land-dwelling and freshwater organisms rather than marine groups. The formation of the terrestrial corridor thus represents a key geological driver of large-scale biotic exchange and continental faunal reorganization.