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.

Sea floor spreading evidence of plate tectonics. 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. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. Evidence of sea floor spreading harry hess s hypothesis about seafloor spreading had collected several pieces of evidence to support the theory.

Strong evidence of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be. 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.

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. 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.

The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the earth s mantle. In the 1960s geologist harry hess proposed that the sea floor was moving outward from the midoceanic ridges. Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics.

The stripes alternate between those with magnetic material orientated toward magnetic north and those oriented in the opposite direction. Stripes of magnetic material in the seafloor provide strong evidence for tectonic theory. When the concept of seafloor spreading came along scientists recognized that it was the mechanism to explain how continents could move around earth s surface.

Plate tectonics plate tectonics seafloor spreading. The regions that hold the unique record of earth s magnetic field lie along the mid ocean ridges where the sea floor is spreading. Like the scientists before us we will now merge the ideas of continental drift and seafloor spreading into the theory of plate tectonics.