Sea Floor Spreading Evidence Of Continental Drift

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.

Sea floor spreading evidence of continental drift. 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. Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically. Subduction and sea floor spreading are processes that could alter the size and form of the ocean.

See also continental drift a veritable legion of evidence supports the seafloor spreading hypothesis. Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates. As molten rock rises from the earth it forms new crust between the plates. Scientists agree that continents rest on rocks called tectonic plates which shift and move.

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. Alfred wegener a german meteorologist born in 1880 developed the idea of continental drift. He suggested that continents moved around the earth like giant rafts.

Supporters of continental drift originally theorized that the continents moved drifted through unmoving oceans. Besides the continents had to be the key parts because we live on them so they re important. 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. When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere.

Fellow scientists at the time thought the theory was ludicrous. Seafloor spreading disproves an early part of the theory of continental drift. Once we got data from the sea floor it beca. The theory maintains that the crust and uppermost mantle or lithosphere is segmented into a number of solid rigid slabs called lithospheric plates.

Seafloor spreading proves that the ocean itself is a site of tectonic activity. Continental drift was the term applied when there was no firm information about processes on the sea floor. In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. Sea floor spreading further supports the continental drift theory.

He put together the evidence of ancient glaciations and the distribution of fossil to formulate a theory that the continents have moved over the.