Cocos Plate location
The Cocos Plate is an oceanic region east of the Pacific Plate and north of the Nazca Plate. Its northeastern edge approaches the Middle America Trench.
BOUNDARIES
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Plate colours identify regions, not risk.
Subduction along Central America
Cocos lithosphere subducts beneath southern Mexico and Central America. The upper plate changes along this margin, so assigning the whole trench to one country or one upper plate is misleading.
Neighbouring plates
The Cocos-Nazca spreading system lies to the south. Near western Mexico, the smaller Rivera Plate is separated in PB2002 and should not be silently merged with Cocos.
Sources and map method
Plate outlines use Peter Bird's PB2002 model, distributed by Nordpil under the Open Data Commons Attribution licence. Coastlines and country outlines are Natural Earth public-domain data. Boundary detail is limited by the source model.
- USGS: Caribbean Plate and vicinity
- USGS: This Dynamic Planet
- Bird (2003): PB2002 plate boundary model
- Map dataset sources and licences
- PB2002 geometry and licence
- Natural Earth terms
Country lookup compares simplified land outlines with the plate model. Boundaries and historical coastlines are modelled features. This atlas explains geography; it does not predict earthquakes or provide site-specific hazard estimates.