The Crust Under The Ocean Floor
The oldest parts of continental crust on the other hand are more than 4 billion years old.
The crust under the ocean floor. Plate tectonics plate tectonics seafloor spreading. Structure of the earth. Magma oozes up from the mantle through a crack in the ocean floor filling in the space between the plates and spreading out from the plate boundary. The destruction of oceanic crust occurs at subduction zones where oceanic crust is forced under either continental crust or oceanic crust.
A symmetrical pattern of positive and negative magnetic lines emanates from the mid ocean ridge. Oceanic crust is thin and young no more than about 20 km thick and no older than about 180 million years. New rock is formed by magma at the mid ocean ridges and the ocean floor spreads out from this point. Only a small portion of the oceanic crust produced in the atlantic is subducted.
The oldest existing oceanic crust is in the ionian sea part of the eastern mediterranean basin. Oceanic crust is about 6 km 4 miles thick. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. Largely due to subduction oceanic crust is much much younger than continental crust.
The continental crust covers only one third of the earth s surface and makes up all of the dry land found on earth. The oceanic crust displays a pattern of magnetic lines parallel to the ocean ridges frozen in the basalt. The process that forms new ocean floor and oceanic crust. Oceanic crust covers about 60 percent of the earth s surface.
Subduction zone the place where one plate is getting bent and pulled under the edge of another plate. Oceanic crust is born at the mid ocean ridges where plates are pulled apart. The crust under land is thicker and contains more rock types. Oceanic crust the outermost layer of earth s lithosphere that is found under the oceans and formed at spreading centres on oceanic ridges which occur at divergent plate boundaries.
The crust thickness averages about 18 miles 30 kilometers under the continents but is only about 3 miles 5 kilometers under the oceans. The seafloor of the ionian sea is about 270 million years old. Today the atlantic basin is actively spreading at the mid atlantic ridge. It is light and brittle and can break.
Two types of crust make up the land on earth and its ocean floor. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be. Everything older has been pulled underneath the continents by subduction.