Map Of Age Of Ocean Floor And Explanation

Contours of 20 million years are available as a layer that is currently set to invisible.

Map of age of ocean floor and explanation.

This dataset shows the age of the ocean floor along with the labeled tectonic plates and boundaries. In the 1950s and 1960s marine geologists such as bruce heezen marie tharp and henry menard used data from echo sounders to map ocean ridges in the north atlantic and the pacific. For that geologists date and study continental crust. 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.

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. Researchers today published the most detailed map of the ocean floor ever produced. 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 following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur.

Data collected by satellites and remote sensing instruments were used to created a model at least twice as. Therefore seafloor dating isn t that useful for studying plate motions beyond the cretaceous. The data is from four companion digital models of the age age uncertainty spreading rates and spreading asymmetries of the world s ocean basins. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level.

A digital age map of the ocean floor. Examine the color code to understand how the age of rocks changes from the center to the edges of the ocean floor. They noticed first that these ridges stretched on for thousands of kilometers in long continuous mountain chains that wound around the earth s surface almost. To get the dependence on x one must substitute t x v ax l where l is the distance between the ridge to the continental shelf roughly half the ocean width and a is the ocean basin age.

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. Consider how the age of rocks is related to the shape of the seafloor you saw in step 3. Sio reference series 93 30 scripps institution of oceanography.

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