Dating The Age Of The Ocean Floor

By the use of radiometric age dating and studying fossil ages it was also found out the rocks of the sea floor age is younger than the continental rocks.

Dating the age of the ocean floor. Answer the questions below. It is called a geomagnetic reversal. Although the age of the ocean floor roughly corresponds to the amount of sediment accumulation dating the seafloor and its sediments is not a good way to estimate the age of the earth as humphreys 2005 implies. Cox and his colleagues used this method to date continental volcanic rocks from around the world.

It is believed that continental rocks formed 3 billion years ago however the sediments samples from the ocean floor are found to be not exceeding 200 million years old. Examine the color code to understand how the age of rocks changes from the center to the edges of the ocean floor. Scientists can determine the age of the seafloor thanks to the changing magnetic field of our planet. This requires drilling to the basalts.

Contours of 20 million years are available as a layer that is currently set to invisible. However it was the potassium argon dating method that unlocked the riddle of the magnetic striping on the ocean floor and provided convincing evidence for the seafloor spreading hypothesis. Consider how the age of rocks is related to the shape of the seafloor you saw in step 3. Oceanic crust is about 6 km 4 miles thick.

It is composed of several layers not including the overlying sediment. When scientists studied the magnetic properties of the seafloor. At those times the magma located directly under the solid predominately continental crust was formed to some degree in layers corresponding to the color images on the noaa age of the ocean floor rainbow map as follows. Depth due to thermal subsidence the depth will give a rough age for seafloor younger than 70 100 ma.

Oceanic crust the outermost layer of earth s lithosphere that is found under the oceans and formed at spreading centres on oceanic ridges which occur at divergent plate boundaries. Deep ocean drilling and radiometric dating in the late 1960s gave an accurate stratigraphy and precise date of the ocean floor. This dataset shows the age of the ocean floor along with the labeled tectonic plates and boundaries. Methods to date the seafloor.

From studying the oxygen isotopes of the shells of microfossils in these cores scientists were able to begin studying the earth s past climates in a study known as paleoclimatology. The lowest fossils just above the pillow basalts will give the age of the crust. Dating of the seafloor. Dating the oldest land plants and spores indicates land emerged above water 470 mya 1600 km radius.

Because the seafloor is constantly being created and destroyed the ocean floor is actually much younger than the earth as a whole. Fossils these give the age of the sediment layer enclosing them.