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Capricorn plate
Type	Minor (proposed)
Movement	north-east
Speed	59 mm (2.3 in)/year
Features	Indian Ocean
Relative to the African plate

The Capricorn plate is a proposed minor tectonic plate lying beneath the Indian Ocean basin in the southern and eastern hemispheres.

The original theory of plate tectonics, as accepted by the scientific community in the 1960s, assumed fully rigid plates and relatively narrow, distinct plate boundaries. However, research in the late 20th and early 21st centuries suggests that certain plate junctions are diffuse across several dozen or even hundreds of kilometres.

The Capricorn plate is a relatively rigid piece of oceanic crust along the far western edge of the former Indo-Australian plate. The Capricorn plate was once joined with the Indian plate and the Australian plate to form the Indo-Australian plate, but recent studies suggest that the Capricorn plate began separating from the Indian and Australian plates between 18 million years ago and 8 million years ago along a wide, diffuse boundary.

References

1. Royer, Jean-Yves; Gordon, Richard G. (August 1997). "The Motion and Boundary Between the Capricorn and Australian Plates". Science. 277 (5330): 1268–1274. doi:10.1126/science.277.5330.1268.
2. Gordon, Richard G. (March 2009). "Lithospheric Deformation in the equatorial Indian Ocean: Timing and Tibet". Geology. 37 (3): 287–288. Bibcode:2009Geo....37..287G. doi:10.1130/focus032009.1.

v t e Tectonic plates
Major plates	African Antarctic Eurasian Indo-Australian Australian Indian North American Pacific South American
Minor plates	Amurian Arabian Burma Caribbean Caroline Cocos Indian Nazca New Hebrides Okhotsk Philippine Scotia Somali Sunda Yangtze
Microplates	Adriatic Aegean Sea Anatolian Balmoral Reef Banda Sea Bird's Head Capricorn Coiba Conway Reef Explorer Futuna Galápagos Gonâve Gorda Greenland Halmahera Iberian Iranian Juan de Fuca Juan Fernández Kerguelen Kermadec Lwandle Madagascar Malpelo Manus Maoke Mariana Molucca Sea Niuafo’ou North Andes North Bismarck North Galápagos Okinawa Panama Pelso Philippine Mobile Belt Rivera Rovuma Sangihe Seychelles Shetland Solomon Sea South Bismarck South Sandwich Timor Tisza Tonga Trobriand Victoria Woodlark
Ancient plates	Baltic Bellingshausen Charcot Cimmeria Farallon Insular Intermontane Izanagi Kula Lhasa Malvinas Moa Phoenix Kshiroda
Oceanic ridges	Aden Ridge Carlsberg Ridge Central Indian Ridge Chile Ridge Cocos Ridge East Pacific Rise Explorer Ridge Gakkel Ridge Galápagos Spreading Center Gorda Ridge Juan de Fuca Ridge Mid-Atlantic Ridge Knipovich Ridge Kolbeinsey Ridge Mohns Ridge Reykjanes Ridge Pacific–Antarctic Ridge South American–Antarctic Ridge Southeast Indian Ridge Southwest Indian Ridge
Ancient oceanic ridges	Aegir Ridge Alpha Ridge Antarctic–Phoenix Ridge Kula–Farallon Ridge Mid-Labrador Ridge Pacific–Farallon Ridge Pacific–Kula Ridge
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