Floor Of An Ocean Basin

Ocean basin ocean basin deep sea sediments.

Floor of an ocean basin.

The only exception are the crests of the spreading centres where new ocean floor has not existed long enough to accumulate a sediment cover. The ocean basin floor is everywhere covered by sediments of different types and origins. 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. Continuing your journey across the ocean basin you would descend the steep continental slope to the abyssal plain.

A number of major features of the basins depart. Together they contain the overwhelming majority of all water on the planet and have an average depth of almost 4 km about 2 5 miles. Since the new oceanic basins are shallower than the old oceanic basins the total capacity of the world s ocean basins decreases during times of active sea floor spreading. In fact it will.

Older references e g littlehales 1930 consider the oceanic basins to be the complement to the continents with erosion dominating the latter and the sediments so derived ending up in the ocean basins. Sunlight does not penetrate to the sea floor making these deep dark ecosystems less productive than those along. During the opening of the atlantic ocean sea level was so high that a western interior seaway formed across north america from the gulf of mexico to the arctic ocean. Ocean basin floor the ocean floor in those parts of the oceans that are more than 2000 m deep.

It occupies approximately one third of the atlantic and indian ocean floors and three quarters of the pacific ocean floor. At depths of over 10 000 feet and covering 70 of the ocean floor abyssal plains are the largest habitat on earth. Deep ocean drilling and radiometric dating in the late 1960s gave an accurate stratigraphy and precise date of the ocean floor. The ocean basins are partially bounded by the continents but they are interconnected which is why marine scientists refer to a single world ocean the world ocean is divided into the north and south pacific north and south atlantic indian and arctic oceans.

Oceanographers also recognize the southern ocean which encircles antarctica and includes the southernmost parts of the pacific. More modern sources e g floyd 1991 regard the ocean basins more as basaltic plains than as sedimentary depositories since most sedimentation occurs on the continental shelves.