Age Ocean Floor

In recent years satellite images show a very clear mapping of the seabed and are used extensively in the study and exploration of the ocean floor.

Age ocean floor.

For that geologists date and study continental crust. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. Oceanic crust is the uppermost layer of the oceanic portion of a tectonic plate it is composed of the upper oceanic crust with pillow lavas and a dike complex and the lower oceanic crust composed of troctolite gabbro and ultramafic cumulates. Samples collected from the ocean floor show that the age of oceanic crust increases with distance from the spreading centre important evidence in favour of this process.

A digital age map of the ocean floor. Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet. Therefore seafloor dating isn t that useful for studying plate motions beyond the cretaceous. The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur.

Because of this correlation between age and subduction potential very little ocean floor is older than 125 million years and almost none of it is older than 200 million years. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. The data are described in a data and analysis note in the journal of geophysical research 1997 entitled digital isochrons of the world s ocean floor. The ionic growing earth ige posits the same 8 elements that started the earth heated the planet for the first 3 3 5 billion years of its existence see ige fig.

Basalt the once molten rock that makes up most new oceanic crust is a fairly magnetic substance and scientists began using magnetometers to measure the magnetism of the ocean floor in the 1950s what they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around. Age of the ocean floor a critical analysis. Seabed contains several hundred years worth of cobalt and nickel. This dataset shows the age of the ocean floor along with the labeled tectonic plates and boundaries.

The arrival of water 1400 mya solidified the molten crust and by 1200 mya submerged. Shortly after the conclusion of world war ii sonar equipped vessels crisscrossed the oceans collecting ocean depth profiles of the seafloor beneath them. Contours of 20 million years are available as a layer that is currently set to invisible. The process that continually adds new material to the ocean floor is seafloor spreading and the continental slope.

These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates vary from about 0 1 cm read more. The crust overlies the solidified and uppermost layer of the mantle the crust and the solid mantle layer together constitute oceanic lithosphere. The data is from four companion digital models of the age age uncertainty spreading rates and spreading asymmetries of the world s ocean basins.