Map Of Age Of Ocean Floor And Explanation

A digital age map of the ocean floor.

Map of age of ocean floor and explanation.

Contours of 20 million years are available as a layer that is currently set to invisible. 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. 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. Data collected by satellites and remote sensing instruments were used to created a model at least twice as.

This dataset shows the age of the ocean floor along with the labeled tectonic plates and boundaries. Consider how the age of rocks is related to the shape of the seafloor you saw in step 3. Answer the questions below. 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. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. 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. 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.

Examine the color code to understand how the age of rocks changes from the center to the edges of the ocean floor. Sio reference series 93 30 scripps institution of oceanography. The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. 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.

For that geologists date and study continental crust. Shortly after the conclusion of world war ii sonar equipped vessels crisscrossed the oceans collecting ocean depth profiles of the seafloor beneath them. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. Rather than height of the ocean floor above a base or reference level the depth of the ocean is of interest.

The survey data was used to create three dimensional relief maps of the ocean floor and by 1953 american oceanic cartographer marie tharp had created the first of several maps that revealed the presence of an underwater mountain range.