Age Of Pacific Ocean Floor

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur.

Age of pacific ocean floor.

Visualize how the atlantic ocean floor started separating the continents and grew to its present size. Because of this correlation between age and subduction potential very little ocean floor is older than 125 million years and almost none of it is older than 200 million years. The pacific ocean was born 750 million years ago at the breakup of rodinia although it is generally called the panthalassic ocean until the breakup of pangea about 200 million years ago. The oldest pacific ocean floor is only around 180 ma old with older crust subducted by now.

The ionian sea and the east mediterranean basins therefore represent the oldest preserved in situ ocean floor ranging in age from about 270 ma late permian to 230 ma middle triassic according to our model contrasting common wisdom that the oldest in situ ocean floor is found in the west pacific and is jurassic in age. This dataset shows the age of the ocean floor along with the labeled tectonic plates and boundaries. Sio reference series 93 30 scripps institution of oceanography. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level.

A digital age map of the ocean floor. Based on ages of the oldest rocks in the north and south atlantic describe how and when the atlantic ocean formed and how its shape has changed through time. Seafloor spreading in three ocean basins patterns of seafloor spreading in the pacific left arctic centre and atlantic right oceans showing the relative age of oceanic crust. The data are described in a data and analysis note in the journal of geophysical research 1997 entitled digital isochrons of the world s ocean floor.

Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet. For that geologists date and study continental crust. The data is from four companion digital models of the age age uncertainty spreading rates and spreading asymmetries of the world s ocean basins. The pacific ocean evolved in the mesozoic from the panthalassic ocean which had formed when rodinia rifted apart around 750 ma the first ocean floor which is part of the current pacific plate began 160 ma to the west of the central pacific and subsequently developed into the largest oceanic plate on earth.

Therefore seafloor dating isn t that useful for studying plate motions beyond the cretaceous.