The Sediment Layer On The Ocean Floor

Ocean floor sediments may be window on world s warmer future.

The sediment layer on the ocean floor.

Russel humphreys a physicist at the institute for creation research believes that subduction removes only one billion tons of sediment from the seafloor every year so if the oceans are billions of years old there should be much more sediment present on the ocean floor than the current thickness which averages around 400 meters. There is a vast difference between how uniformitarian scientists and creation scientists view earth history and the data sets from the past. Sediment thickness in the oceans averages about 450 metres 1 500 feet. Sea floor sediment and the age of the earth.

Reviewed by michael j. Thus by examining the amount of dust as well as its grain size in the different layers of a sediment core oceanographers learn how arid the land surface was at a given time as well as how fast the average wind speeds were. Sea floor sediments and sedimentary rocks can range in thickness from a few millimetres to several tens of kilometres. Near the surface the sea floor sediments remain unconsolidated but at depths of hundreds to thousands of metres depending on the type of sediment and other factors the sediment becomes lithified.

It is further contoured by strong currents along the continental rise. Ocean floor sediments sediment on the seafloor originates from a variety of sources. The only exception are the crests of the spreading centres where new ocean floor has not existed long enough to accumulate a sediment cover. Analysis of seafloor sediment reveals lower oxygen levels in the ocean when the planet heated up 55 9 million years ago.

There are three kinds of sea floor sediment. Terrigenous pelagic and hydrogenous. The sediment cover in the pacific basin ranges from 300 to 600 metres. Terrigenous sediment is derived from land and usually deposited on the continental shelf continental rise and abyssal plain.