Oldest Part Of Ocean Floor

This continual motion is evidenced by the occurrence of earthquakes and volcanoes.

Oldest part of ocean floor. Deep ocean drilling and radiometric dating in the late 1960s gave an accurate stratigraphy and precise date of the ocean floor. The tectonic plates are constantly in motion and new surfaces are always being created. The mid atlantic ridge is a mid ocean ridge which is a system of underwater mountains formed by tectonic plate movements and is a catalyst for oceanic crust formation. Some cratons in canada and greenland shelter the oldest continental rocks in the world about 4 billion years old.

The crust overlies the solidified and uppermost layer of the mantle the crust and the solid mantle layer together constitute oceanic lithosphere. The oldest continental rocks are found in cratons. So the oldest sea floor is found at the plate margins. However the pacific ocean is technically much older as it developed from the center of panthalassa an ancient ocean that first began forming around 750 million years ago.

The oldest oceanic crust in the atlantic ocean is part of the mid atlantic ridge mar the longest mountain range in the world. The youngest part of the sea floor is where it is being created at the mid ocean ridge. Just as new sea floor forms at mid ocean ridges new sea floor is forced back into the mantle at abduction zones. On average oceanic crust is only 6 to 7km thick compared to 35 to 40km for con tinental crust.

This is why panthalassa is also know as the paleo. This is because the oldest sea floor is subducted under other plates and replaces by new surfaces. Cratons are therefore always found within continents. It then moves outwards towards the plate margins where it is subducted.

The oldest seafloor is at east and west the edges of the atlantic ocean dating to. From studying the oxygen isotopes of the shells of microfossils in these cores scientists were able to begin studying the earth s past climates in a study known as paleoclimatology. The ocean basins are characterized not only by lying in deep water the ocean floor averages about 4km below sea level but also by being underlain by a thin layer of crust. Where is the.

The mid atlantic ocean ridge is young ocean floor. The oldest rocks on the ocean floor would be those at the colliding edge of the plate boundary answer 2. A craton is a stable part of the continental lithosphere which has survived several cycles responsible for the merge and the dislocation of supercontinents.