The continental crust covers only one third of the earth s surface and makes up all of the dry land found on earth.
The crust under the ocean floor.
Samples collected from the ocean floor show that the age of oceanic crust increases with distance from the spreading centre important evidence in favour of this process.
Plate tectonics plate tectonics seafloor spreading.
The oldest existing oceanic crust is in the ionian sea part of the eastern mediterranean basin.
It is composed of several layers not including the overlying sediment.
Oceanic crust is about 6 km 4 miles thick.
Subduction zone the place where one plate is getting bent and pulled under the edge of another plate.
The oldest parts of continental crust on the other hand are more than 4 billion years old.
The destruction of oceanic crust occurs at subduction zones where oceanic crust is forced under either continental crust or oceanic crust.
Largely due to subduction oceanic crust is much much younger than continental crust.
Magma oozes up from the mantle through a crack in the ocean floor filling in the space between the plates and spreading out from the plate boundary.
The oceanic crust displays a pattern of magnetic lines parallel to the ocean ridges frozen in the basalt.
New rock is formed by magma at the mid ocean ridges and the ocean floor spreads out from this point.
The crust thickness averages about 18 miles 30 kilometers under the continents but is only about 3 miles 5 kilometers under the oceans.
Oceanic crust is born at the mid ocean ridges where plates are pulled apart.
As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading.
Oceanic crust is thin and young no more than about 20 km thick and no older than about 180 million years.
Only a small portion of the oceanic crust produced in the atlantic is subducted.
Continental crust earth.
A symmetrical pattern of positive and negative magnetic lines emanates from the mid ocean ridge.
Everything older has been pulled underneath the continents by subduction.
The seafloor of the ionian sea is about 270 million years old.
The process that forms new ocean floor and oceanic crust.
Oceanic crust covers about 60 percent of the earth s surface.
It is light and brittle and can break.
Two types of crust make up the land on earth and its ocean floor.
Today the atlantic basin is actively spreading at the mid atlantic ridge.
Structure of the earth.