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The oldest large-scale oceanic crust is in the west Pacific and north-west Atlantic — both are about up to 180-200 million years old. However, parts of the eastern Mediterranean Sea could be remnants of the much older Tethys Ocean , at about 270 and up to 340 million years old.
Surface map of oceanic crust showing the generation of younger (red) crust and eventual destruction of older (blue) crust. This demonstrates the crustal spatial evolution at the Earth's surface dictated by plate tectonics. Earth's crustal evolution involves the formation, destruction and renewal of the rocky outer shell at that planet's surface.
New oceanic lithosphere is constantly being produced at mid-ocean ridges and is recycled back to the mantle at subduction zones. As a result, oceanic lithosphere is much younger than continental lithosphere: the oldest oceanic lithosphere is about 170 million years old, while parts of the continental lithosphere are billions of years old. [12] [13]
Consequently, old crust must be destroyed, so opposite a spreading center, there is usually a subduction zone: a trench where an ocean plate is sinking back into the mantle. This constant process of creating a new ocean crust and destroying the old ocean crust means that the oldest ocean crust on Earth today is only about 200 million years old ...
The oldest oceanic crust is in the far western equatorial Pacific, east of the Mariana Islands. It is located far away from oceanic spreading centers, where oceanic crust is constantly created or destroyed. The oldest crust is estimated to be only around 200 million years old, compared to the age of Earth which is 4.6 billion years.
The oldest oceanic crust is located in the Western Pacific and is estimated to be 200 Ma old. [ 123 ] [ 124 ] By comparison, the oldest dated continental crust is 4,030 Ma , [ 125 ] although zircons have been found preserved as clasts within Eoarchean sedimentary rocks that give ages up to 4,400 Ma , indicating that at least some continental ...
Oceanic crust is formed at a mid-ocean ridge, while the lithosphere is subducted back into the asthenosphere at oceanic trenches Age of oceanic crust (red is youngest, and blue is oldest) Oceanic crust, which forms the bedrock of abyssal plains, is continuously being created at mid-ocean ridges (a type of divergent boundary) by a process known ...
The Canary Islands are built upon one of the oldest regions of Earth's oceanic crust (175–147 Ma), part of the slow-moving African plate, in the continental rise section of Northwest Africa's passive continental margin. [9] [10] The rocks under and in the Canary Islands are a record of multiple periods of volcanic activity: