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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 ...
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 Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen extends roughly 500 miles long (805 km) by ~80–90 miles wide (129–145 km). The two remaining continental plate boundary arms of the triple junction from which the Southern Oklahoma aulacogen formed became spreading zones for the spreading of the Iapetus Ocean during the breakup of the supercontinent, Rodinia, estimated to have occurred in the Cryogenian ...
The axis of the rift area may contain volcanic rocks, and active volcanism is a part of many, but not all, active rift systems. Major rifts occur along the central axis of most mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust and lithosphere is created along a divergent boundary between two tectonic plates.
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.
The Canadian Arctic Rift System is a branch of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that extends 4,800 km (3,000 mi) into the North American continent. It is an incipient structure that diminishes in degree of development northwestward, bifurcates at the head of Baffin Bay and disappears into the Arctic Archipelago.
A team led by Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen concluded that there was an enormous mountain chain with a rift valley at its crest, running up the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists named it the 'Mid-Atlantic Ridge'. Other research showed that the ridge crest was seismically active [45] and fresh lavas were found in the rift valley. [46]
Axial Seamount is set on a long, low-lying plateau, with two large rift zones trending 50 km (31 mi) to the northeast and southwest of its center. The volcano features an unusual rectangular caldera , and its flanks are pockmarked by fissures , vents , sheet flows , and pit craters up to 100 m (328 ft) deep; its geology is further complicated ...