The Sea Floor Is Younger Or Older At The Mid Ridge

Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor.

The sea floor is younger or older at the mid ridge.

Radiometric dating shows that the sea floor closer to the mid ocean ridge are younger than the ones farther. Therefore seafloor dating isn t that useful for studying plate motions beyond the cretaceous. New rock material added to the edges of the south american and african plates at the mid atlantic ridge has separated the two continents. For that geologists date and study continental crust.

Core c1 has 2 11 m of clay and siliceous ooze above 3 2 m of basalt. The youngest sea floor can be found towards the edges of the ocean near the eastern and western continents seafloor near the mid atlantic ridge plate tectonic boundary can be up to 10 million years old. Convection what process is occurring in the mantle in this diagram. Core d1 has 1 87 m of siliceous ooze over 2 54 m of basalt.

Older seafloor is therefore colder than new seafloor and older oceanic basins deeper than new oceanic basins due to isostasy. Imagine what the ocean floor would have looked like 150 million years ago when all the rocks younger than that did not yet exist. Core b1 has 2 37 m of muddy clay ooze covering 3 57 m of basalt. The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate the east pacific rise is a mid ocean ridge that runs through the eastern pacific ocean and separates the pacific plate from the north american.

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. Core a1 has 2 88 meters m of clay and siliceous ooze covering 4 86 m of pillow basalt. The age of the seafloor farther away from the mid ocean ridge is younger older than the age of the seafloor closer to the mid ocean ridge. When a hotspot is involved it will push away the old sea floor to make room for.

The seafloor drilling system led to the evidence that supports the seafloor spreading hypothesis. The samples obtained from the seafloor drill reveals that the rocks away from the mid oceanic ridge were relatively older than the rocks near to it. Of red and orange. Although oceanic crust has been forming on earth for over 4 billion years all of the sea floor older than about 200 million years has been recycled by plate tectonics.

As new seafloor forms and spreads apart from the mid ocean ridge it slowly cools over time.