Sea Floor Spreading Evidence Of Continental Drift

Fellow scientists at the time thought the theory was ludicrous.

Sea floor spreading evidence of continental drift.

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. In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. Plate tectonics theory convection currents and sea floor spreading. The theory maintains that the crust and uppermost mantle or lithosphere is segmented into a number of solid rigid slabs called lithospheric plates.

The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically. By the 1960s the theories of continental drift and sea floor spreading were supported by reliable scientific data and combined to develop modern day plate tectonic theory. Alfred wegener a german meteorologist born in 1880 developed the idea of continental drift. See also continental drift a veritable legion of evidence supports the seafloor spreading hypothesis.

He put together the evidence of ancient glaciations and the distribution of fossil to formulate a theory that the continents have moved over the. Continental drift sea floor spreading and plate tectonics plate tectonics is a theory developed in the late 1960s to explain how the outer layers of the. Another indication of continental drift is tectonic activity and seafloor spreading. For instance the atlantic ocean is believed to be expanding because of its few trenches.

Subduction and sea floor spreading are processes that could alter the size and form of the ocean. Besides the continents had to be the key parts because we live on them so they re important. Sea floor spreading further supports the continental drift theory. He suggested that continents moved around the earth like giant rafts.

Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. Continental drift was the term applied when there was no firm information about processes on the sea floor. Once we got data from the sea floor it beca. Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates.

Wherever continents are bordered by deep sea trench systems as in the pacific ocean the ocean floor is plunged downward underthrusting the continents and ultimately reentering and dissolving in earth s mantle from which it had originated. Supporters of continental drift originally theorized that the continents moved drifted through unmoving oceans. Seafloor spreading proves that the ocean itself is a site of tectonic activity. As molten rock rises from the earth it forms new crust between the plates.

Seafloor spreading disproves an early part of the theory of continental drift.