Sea Floor Spreading Different Continental Drift

Continental drift and seafloor spreading are two natural occurring processes responsible for the generation of new fresh areas of the crust and the destruction of old crust.

Sea floor spreading different continental drift. Supporters of continental drift originally theorize d that the continents moved drifted through unmoving oceans. 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. 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. Keeping earth in shape.

How is seafloor spreading different from continental drift in the continental drift theory it was thought that the continents plowed through the ocean. Seafloor spreading is when molten material rises and cools down and makes new seafloor continental drift is the theory that the continents were once together and the big land mass is called. In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. Plates are composed of lithosphere about 100 km thick that float on the ductile asthenosphere.

Continental drift is the gradual movement of continental plates over the earth s surface over time. Primary cause is convection currents in the mantle. Seafloor spreading is the secondary cause and continental drift is the affect. The first truly detailed and comprehensive theory of continental drift was proposed in 1912 by alfred wegener a german meteorologist bringing together a large mass of geologic and paleontological data wegener postulated that throughout most of geologic time there was only one continent which he called pangea late in the triassic period which lasted from approximately 251 million to 199 6.

Although you might take one step back and assign the primary cause to residual radioactive materials in the core and mantle. Plate tectonics by combining the sea floor spreading theory with continental drift and information on global seismicity the new theory of plate tectonics became a coherent theory to explain crustal movements. Seafloor spreading disproves an early part of the theory of continental drift. These plates float atop an underlying rock layer called the asthenosphere.

Tuzo wilson combined the continental drift and seafloor spreading hypotheses to propose the theory of plate tectonics. Seafloor spreading was about the tectonic plates diverging and pushing the continents away from the mid ocean ridges. On the other hand the pacific ocean has more trenches that lead to more subduction of ocean crusts rather than the formation of the mid ocean ridge. Continental drift is a very similar process to seafloor spreading.