Bird's Head plate

Bird's Head plate
The Bird's Head plate
Type	Minor
Movement^1	north-west
Speed^1	92mm/year
Features	Bird's Head Peninsula, Pacific Ocean
^1Relative to the African plate

The Bird's Head plate is a minor tectonic plate incorporating the Bird's Head Peninsula, at the western end of the island of New Guinea. Hillis and Müller consider it to be moving in unison with the Pacific plate.[1] P. Bird considers it to be unconnected to the Pacific plate.[2]

The plate is separating from the Australian plate and the small Maoke plate along a divergent boundary to the southeast. Convergent boundaries exist along the north, between the Bird's Head and the Caroline plate, the Philippine Sea plate and the Halmahera plate to the northwest. A transform boundary exists between the Bird's Head and the Molucca Sea Collision Zone to the southwest. Another convergent boundary exists between the Bird's Head and the Banda Sea plate to the south.[3]

References

1. Hillis, R. R.; Müller, R. D. (2003). Evolution and Dynamics of the Australian Plate. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America. p. 363. ISBN 0-8137-2372-8.
2. Bird, P. (2003). "An updated digital model of plate boundaries". Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 4 (3): 1027. doi:10.1029/2001GC000252. http://peterbird.name/publications/2003_PB2002/2003_PB2002.htm.
3. https://reliefweb.int/attachments/38407cb4-7c1b-3dda-a321-10b9cd4a58a7/20041126.pdf USGS: Papua, Indonesia Earthquake of 26 November 2004