Sea Floor Spreading And Plate Tectonic Evidence

The mid ocean ridge is where the seafloor spreading occurs in which tectonic plates large slabs of earth s lithosphere split apart from each other.

Sea floor spreading and plate tectonic evidence.

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. The stripes alternate between those with magnetic material orientated toward magnetic north and those oriented in the opposite direction. 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. The regions that hold the unique record of earth s magnetic field lie along the mid ocean ridges where the sea floor is spreading.

Paleomagnetism led the revival of the continental drift hypothesis and its transformation into theories of sea floor spreading and plate tectonics. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. Seafloor spreading as upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. Plate tectonics plate tectonics seafloor spreading.

When the concept of seafloor spreading came along scientists recognized that it was the mechanism to explain how continents could move around earth s surface. Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart. By the 1950s geologists geophysicists seismologists oceanographers and physicists had accumulated a large body of data about the ocean floor and the underlying crust. Theory of plate tectonics.

Theory of plate tectonics the evidence among the many gaps in scientific knowledge at the time of alfred wegener was an understanding of the dynamics of the ocean floors. Like the scientists before us we will now merge the ideas of continental drift and seafloor spreading into the theory of plate tectonics. Strong evidence of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. The theory maintains that the crust and uppermost mantle or lithosphere is segmented into a number of solid rigid slabs called lithospheric plates.

Seafloor spreading is the mechanism behind this phenomenon. Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics. By the 1960s the theories of continental drift and sea floor spreading were supported by reliable scientific data and combined to develop modern day plate tectonic theory. At subduction zones the edge of the denser plate subducts or slides beneath the less dense one.

The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the earth s mantle. By the use of the sonar hess was able to map the ocean floor and discovered the mid atlantic ridge mid.