Seafloor Spreading Was A Key Discovery Because It Showed

Plant fossils showed cold areas used to be tropical.

Seafloor spreading was a key discovery because it showed. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones and spreads out laterally away from them. What layer of earths mantle do tectonic plates ride on. The mid ocean ridges are elevated above the surrounding seafloor because. Terms in this set 31 till and striations.

The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate the east pacific rise is a mid ocean ridge that runs through the eastern pacific ocean and separates the pacific plate from the north american. Why was sea floor spreading a key discovery. 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. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor.

The area was once covered with swamps jungles. 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. For instance the atlantic ocean is believed to be expanding because of its few trenches. What kind of fossil evidence supported wegners hypothesis.

But the discovery of seafloor spreading disproved a part of wegener s theory because it wasn t just the continents that were moving through static oceans as he had originally thought but rather entire tectonic plates consisting of the continents ocean floors and parts of the upper mantle. Sea floor spreading was a key discovery because it showed. Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast intermediate or slow. It showed that civilization was much more advanced then thought.

The discovery of seafloor spreading finally provided a mechanism for. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading 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. This idea played a pivotal role in the development of the theory of plate tectonics which revolutionized geologic thought during the last quarter of the 20th century. Subduction and sea floor spreading are processes that could alter the size and form of the ocean.

These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates. What was the importance of the discovery that molten rock was coming out of the cracks.