Plates Kenny Lienhard
Plates

Plate 12 of 52

Philippine Sea

Kenny Lienhard, Plates, 2026

Palette
Lapis, from ocean
Structure
Syncline
Drift
4.1 cm a year, west-northwest
5,443,802 km², a minor plate

How it is made

Finished

The Plate in detail

Philippine Sea, seed 428

Plate 12 of 52 · one of one

Traits

Palette
Lapis
Structure
Syncline
Event
None
Faults
None
Scale
Standard
Hang
Level
Accent
Single
Heading
West-northwest, 292.5°
Speed
4.07 cm a year

History

55 million years ago
The West Philippine Basin began to open behind a volcanic arc, making much of this plate's ocean floor.
52 million years ago
The Pacific plate began to sink beneath this plate's eastern edge, starting the Izu-Bonin-Mariana arc.
30 million years ago
The volcanic arc split, and back-arc spreading opened the Parece Vela and Shikoku basins.

Sources: Deschamps and Lallemand 2002, Journal of Geophysical Research 107:2322 · Shervais et al. 2019, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 20:314 · Crameri et al. 2020, Nature Communications 11:3750 · Taylor 1992, Proceedings ODP Scientific Results 126:627-651 · Ishizuka et al. 2011, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 12

Technical notes

The file

90,036bytes, the whole work
74,112bytes of engine, gzip and base64
0network requests
2048 pxdrawn on up to 8 workers, at your screen’s size

One HTML file: the engine (151,144 bytes minified), this plate's data and a small loader. It reads your clock and slides the view to where the plate is today.

engine sha256 a7fbc03acc0fc9ba343881bb88ddaf2b7564564d8bc9cbed16e75e47e01fb3f2

Sources

  • The plate, its outline and its motionBird, P. (2003). An updated digital model of plate boundaries. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 4(3), 1027.
  • What covers it, which chose the paletteESA CCI Land Cover and Water Bodies, ETOPO 2022, Köppen-Geiger climate maps, NSIDC Sea Ice Index.

The work

Live

One HTML file that drifts with your clock, a few centimetres a year.