Creation of the Ocean Floor

Creation of the Ocean Floor

Diandrea Ellmer

SCI 209

August 15th,2016

Jean Paul-Simjouw

Creation of the Ocean Floor

The floor of the ocean contains so many unique things other than just sea life and plants, but rifts, valleys, underwater mountains, and more. Right underneath the rock and sediment lies three different types of plate boundaries in which create mountains and volcanoes but also move the continents around. The three types of plate boundaries are Divergent, Convergent, and Transform. All three have different characteristics and features, process, crust types, and movements. This is called plate tectonics.
        Divergent boundaries are when two plates move away from each other along the mid-ocean ridge and create new sea floor. This particular boundary is known for its rift valley along the mid-ocean ridge. Underneath this rift, magma rises up from the mantle where it solidifies into a solid rock thus forming new sea floor (Ocean Explorer, 2013). The second type is a convergent boundary. This is where the plate move together and run in to each other. A convergent boundary does the opposite of the divergent boundaries because instead of creating new sea floor, it destroys it but it creates continental crust instead (National Geographic, 2016). A feature of this boundary is that there are trenches created along them. Along the boundary and trench lies another unique feature, volcanic arc. These volcanos are highly active and are constantly eruptive (Trujillo & Thurman, 2014). Lastly, a transform boundary is the third type. At this boundary, two plates slide past each other and are offset. There are two pieces of plates that are carried in opposite directions of each other (Ocean Explorer, 2013). There are no particular features to this boundary like the other two but in some areas linear to the plate, there will be more ground up rock due to the movement (Wheeling Jesuit University, 2004).

Before there was a mass amount of information about plate tectonics, there was a theory created by Alfred Wegener called continental drift. He theorized that the continents were once one large land mass (he named it Pangaea) and eventually drifted apart from one another. Ultimately, he believe that the land was able to move through water basins to the locations that they were now at. This theory involved a significant amount of research involving both rocks and fossil types found in continents. He noted that in parts of continents that once were connected there were both similar fossil and rock types. Another key point to his study was glacial activity. Where the weather was now tropical, there was markings of glacial activity. This clearly only had to plausible options, one being a worldwide ice age or that the continents were once all connected. Due to coal deposits a worldwide ice age is not realistic meaning that there had to of been one super continent (Trujillo & Thurman, 2014). Although some of the information produced by his studies is undeniable, his idea of how the land got to where it was at is to far unrealistic and leads me to believe that this is not the case. Plate tectonics is more believable in my opinion. As mentioned above, sea floor is both created and demolished in these processes as well as mountains and volcanos being made. I find plate tectonics more believable for several reasons. One being that the Himalayan Mountains are growing each year supports the idea of convergent boundaries. Also, The Great Rift Valley in Africa is also getting bigger and deeper which supports the ideas of divergent boundaries. Lastly, each year Los Angeles is getting closer and closer to San Francisco due to the movement of transform faults (National Geographic, 2016). This information alone supports the idea that there are boundaries that move, create, and destroy land. With that being said, it is more plausible that through plate tectonics, Pangaea broke into several smaller continents and over millions of years moved to where they are at today. Thus, making it more believable in my opinion. The theory of one large continent and evidence that Wegener found is still supported in all this but the only information disputed is how the land got to where it is today.