Sea Floor Spreading Evidence Of Continental Drift

When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere.

Sea floor spreading evidence of continental drift.

He put together the evidence of ancient glaciations and the distribution of fossil to formulate a theory that the continents have moved over the. For instance the atlantic ocean is believed to be expanding because of its few trenches. Besides the continents had to be the key parts because we live on them so they re important. Supporters of continental drift originally theorized that the continents moved drifted through unmoving oceans.

Scientists agree that continents rest on rocks called tectonic plates which shift and move. 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. Continental drift was the term applied when there was no firm information about processes on the sea floor. As molten rock rises from the earth it forms new crust between the plates.

Fellow scientists at the time thought the theory was ludicrous. Another indication of continental drift is tectonic activity and seafloor spreading. Plate tectonics theory convection currents and sea floor spreading. Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics.

In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j. Seafloor spreading disproves an early part of the theory of continental drift. Once we got data from the sea floor it beca. Alfred wegener a german meteorologist born in 1880 developed the idea of continental drift.

Tuzo wilson combined the continental drift and seafloor spreading hypotheses to propose the theory of plate tectonics. Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates. 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. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically.

Sea floor spreading further supports the continental drift theory. The theory maintains that the crust and uppermost mantle or lithosphere is segmented into a number of solid rigid slabs called lithospheric plates. See also continental drift a veritable legion of evidence supports the seafloor spreading hypothesis. 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 proves that the ocean itself is a site of tectonic activity.