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Deep-sea wood is the term for wood which sinks to the ocean floor. These wood-falls develop deep sea ecosystems. Deep-sea wood supports unique forms of deep sea community life including chemo-synthetic bacteria. Sources of carbon for these deep sea ecosystems are not limited to sunken wood, but also include kelp and the remains of whales. Much ...
The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) or Keweenawan Rift is a 2,000 km (1,200 mi) long geological rift in the center of the North American continent and south-central part of the North American plate. It formed when the continent's core, the North American craton , began to split apart during the Mesoproterozoic era of the Precambrian , about 1.1 ...
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a divergent or constructive plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. In the North Atlantic, the ridge separates the North American from the Eurasian plate and the African plate , north and south of the Azores triple junction .
Graphical geometry of a propagating rift. Red arrow indicates spreading direction. A propagating rift is a seafloor feature associated with spreading centers at mid-ocean ridges and back-arc basins. [1] They are more commonly observed on faster rate spreading centers (50 mm/year or more). [2]
Accommodation zones may be located where older crustal structures intersect the rift axis. In the Gulf of Suez rift, the Zaafarana accommodation zone is located where a shear zone in the Arabian-Nubian Shield meets the rift. [6] Rift flanks or shoulders are elevated areas around rifts. Rift shoulders are typically about 70 km wide. [7]
The Gulf of California Rift Zone (GCRZ) is the northernmost extension of the East Pacific Rise which extends some 1,300 km (800 mi) from the mouth of the Gulf of California to the southern terminus of the San Andreas Fault at the Salton Sink. The GCRZ is an incipient rift zone akin to the Red Sea Rift.
In 2010 a UK team from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton (NOCS), equipped with an autonomously controlled robot submarine, began mapping the full extent of the trench and discovered black smokers on the ocean floor at a depth of 5 km (16,000 ft), the deepest yet found.
Earlier theories by Alfred Wegener and Alexander du Toit of continental drift postulated that continents in motion "plowed" through the fixed and immovable seafloor. The idea that the seafloor itself moves and also carries the continents with it as it spreads from a central rift axis was proposed by Harold Hammond Hess from Princeton University and Robert Dietz of the U.S. Naval Electronics ...