Abstract
The relative plate motion between the North American and Caribbean plates has been commonly assumed to take place in the form of oblique subduction along the Puerto Rico Trench1. West of Hispaniola this plate boundary becomes pure strike-slip. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that this boundary is more diffuse, with part of the plate motion taken up by subduction along the Muertos Trough (MT) south of Hispaniola2–5 (Fig. 1), but there has been no direct seismological evidence of subduction to confirm this. Here we present the results of a study of the 24 June 1984 earthquake beneath MT. The focal mechanism shows thrusting at a depth of 32 km, which together with reports of a great earthquake in 1751 confirms that MT is an active plate boundary. This implies that plate motion is accommodated by several tectonic boundaries delineating microplates caught between the Caribbean and North American plates (Fig. 4).
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