Radiolaria and paleomagnetic data from Deep Sea Drilling Project Sites 595 and 596 indicate that Early Cretaceous seafloor was formed at moderate to high latitudes in the Pacific. This inference requires a Cretaceous spreading ridge south of the Pacific-Phoenix Ridge and substantial dextral strike-slip motion at the Gondwana margin. The previously unrecognized southern oceanic plate, called here the Moa plate, was obliquely subducted beneath the Gondwana margin, and material accreted from it is now part of the Eastern province of New Zealand.