Photo Gallery: Plate Tectonics

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Hot Lava, Mount Etna

Photograph by Carsten Peter

A river of molten lava flows through a channel in hardened lava after an eruption at Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy. Mount Etna, one of Europe's most active volcanoes, was created by the subduction of part of the northward-moving African plate beneath the Eurasian plate.

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Thingvellir National Park, Iceland

Photograph by Crispin Rodwell/Alamy

Hikers walk in the shadow of cliffs in Iceland's Thingvellir National Park. The divergent Mid-Atlantic Ridge rises above sea level at Thingvellir, with the North American plate to the west and the Eurasian plate to the east.

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Offset Streams

Photograph by W.A. Rogers

Offset streams cut into the Carrizo Plain along the San Andreas Fault in California. The fault, which runs more than 700 miles (1,100 kilometers), is the boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. The stretch of the fault that runs through Carrizo Plain is very well defined because the land is arid and the fault has not been significantly eroded.

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Bighorn Basin

Photograph by Louis Maher

The Sheep Mountain anticline in Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, is part of the Rocky Mountains. The mountain chain was formed during a period of intense plate tectonic activity, about 70 million to 40 million years ago. Anticlines are folds that arch upward, with older rocks in the center and younger rocks on the outside.

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Raplee Ridge, Utah

Photograph by Michael Collier

Raplee Ridge, part of the Monument Upwarp in southeastern Utah, is a long, narrow, folded anticline that formed about 70 million to 50 million years ago.

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Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Photograph by Emory Kristoff

An eelpout fish swims near tubeworms at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the Atlantic Ocean. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is an example of a divergent plate boundary and is an area where new seafloor is being created.

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Black Smokers

Photograph by Al Giddings

A cloud of hydrothermal fluids streams from a black smoker, or mineral chimney, along the Mid-Ocean Ridge off the west coast of Mexico. Black smokers are common to spreading zones in plate boundaries. Chimneys are made of lead, iron, manganese, and zinc sulfides, through which spew superheated ocean water. They also harbor exotic life-forms, far below the reach of sunlight.

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Andes Mountains

Photograph by Peter Essick

Sunrise warms the icy southern end of the Andes during a rare break in the weather in Chile's Torres del Paine National Park. The Andes mountains, which span the entire western coast of South America, formed when the Nazca plate subducted under the South American plate.

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Dallol Volcano, Ethiopia

Photograph by Carsten Peter

Sulfur, salt, and other minerals color the crater of Dallol volcano, part of the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia. At 157 feet (48 meters) below sea level, Dallol is Earth's lowest land volcano.

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Lake Natron, Tanzania

Photograph by George Steinmetz, National Geographic

An airplane casts a shadow over the red waters of Lake Natron in Tanzania, part of the East African Rift Valley. The water's red hue is due to algae that live on salts spewed from nearby volcanoes. The East African Rift Valley system begins in northern Syria and extends across East Africa into Mozambique.

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Persian Gulf Plate Activity

Photograph by Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

In the Persian Gulf, two tectonic plates collide. The Arabian plate (lower left) is running up on the Eurasian plate (upper right). The Persian Gulf (top) and the Gulf of Oman (bottom) were once the site of a rift, a place where two plates pull apart from each other, and the Indian Ocean filled in the widening gap between the two plates. However, the process then reversed, and about 20 million years ago, the gulf began to close up. The collision of the two continental plates gives Iran its mountainous terrain.

Rift Escarpments, Eritrea

Photograph by Chris Johns

A mosque dominates the farming villages of Adi Caieh, Eritrea. Rift escarpments in the distance, now heavily eroded, once adjoined the Arabian Peninsula before the Red Sea opened. The escarpments shifted when the continental crust moved west, as the Red Sea formed in stop-start action during a 30-million-year period.