Sea Floor Spreading Evidence Of Plate Tectonics

These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be.

Sea floor spreading evidence of plate tectonics.

Paleomagnetism led the revival of the continental drift hypothesis and its transformation into theories of sea floor spreading and plate tectonics. Seafloor spreading is the mechanism behind this phenomenon. Evidence of sea floor spreading harry hess s hypothesis about seafloor spreading had collected several pieces of evidence to support the theory. The regions that hold the unique record of earth s magnetic field lie along the mid ocean ridges where the sea floor is spreading.

Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart. This evidence was from the investigations of the molten material seafloor drilling radiometric age dating and fossil ages and the magnetic stripes. Plate tectonics plate tectonics seafloor spreading. At subduction zones the edge of the denser plate subducts or slides beneath the less dense one.

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. 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. Measurements indicate that new crust moves away from a ridge at. The rate at which new oceanic lithosphere is added to each tectonic plate on either side of a mid ocean ridge is the spreading half rate and is equal to half of the spreading rate.

Seafloor spreading as upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. 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 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. The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the earth s mantle.

The stripes alternate between those with magnetic material orientated toward magnetic north and those oriented in the opposite direction. Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics. In the 1960s geologist harry hess proposed that the sea floor was moving outward from the midoceanic ridges. Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast intermediate or slow.

His theory of sea floor spreading maintained that new basaltic oceanic crust forms at a midoceanic ridge and is slowly pushed away on both sides toward the continents as more new crust is produced. Stripes of magnetic material in the seafloor provide strong evidence for tectonic theory.