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North American geologic history
...platform sometime between about 60 and 35 million years ago. This collision initiated a reorganization of Caribbean tectonics. The collision zone, notably the island of Cuba, was sheared off the Caribbean Plate and became fixed to the North American Plate. An east-dipping subduction zone was reestablished beneath Central America, detaching the Caribbean Plate from the Pacific. Continued...plate tectonics
...Lesser Antilles—volcanic islands that form a typical island arc—mark a zone where a part of the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean underthrusts that of the Caribbean Sea—namely, the Caribbean Plate. This plate has moved east relative to both North and South America at a rate of 10 to 20 millimetres per year for tens of millions of years. This displacement and the consequent...
