Sea Floor Spreading Evidence Of Continental Drift

Seafloor spreading disproves an early part of the theory of continental drift.

Sea floor spreading evidence of continental drift.

Alfred wegener a german meteorologist born in 1880 developed the idea of continental drift. Wherever continents are bordered by deep sea trench systems as in the pacific ocean the ocean floor is plunged downward underthrusting the continents and ultimately reentering and dissolving in earth s mantle from which it had originated. Sea floor spreading further supports the continental drift theory. Subduction and sea floor spreading are processes that could alter the size and form of the ocean.

He suggested that continents moved around the earth like giant rafts. When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere. As molten rock rises from the earth it forms new crust between the plates. For instance the atlantic ocean is believed to be expanding because of its few trenches.

The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically. Plate tectonics theory convection currents and sea floor spreading. Seafloor spreading proves that the ocean itself is a site of tectonic activity. Due to this continuous seafloor spreading occurs and makes atlantic ocean floor to be connected to other continental crust making the ocean gets wider over the time.

He put together the evidence of ancient glaciations and the distribution of fossil to formulate a theory that the continents have moved over the. In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. Tuzo wilson combined the continental drift and seafloor spreading hypotheses to propose the theory of plate tectonics.

Once we got data from the sea floor it beca. 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. Scientists agree that continents rest on rocks called tectonic plates which shift and move. Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates.

Continental drift sea floor spreading and plate tectonics plate tectonics is a theory developed in the late 1960s to explain how the outer layers of the. See also continental drift a veritable legion of evidence supports the seafloor spreading hypothesis. Continental drift was the term applied when there was no firm information about processes on the sea floor. Besides the continents had to be the key parts because we live on them so they re important.

Fellow scientists at the time thought the theory was ludicrous.