What Is The Ocean Floor Made Of

Most of the seafloor is covered by sediments that average 350 m thick.

What is the ocean floor made of.

It s flat blue and honestly it s kind of boring. Other articles where ocean floor is discussed. 2 biogenous material is the sediment made up of the hard parts of sea animals that accumulate on the bottom of. Ocean definition is the whole body of salt water that covers nearly three fourths of the surface of the earth.

In the deepest parts of the. 1 terrigenous describes the sediment derived from the materials eroded by rain rivers glaciers and that which is blown into the ocean by the wind such as volcanic ash. But underneath that surface there s a lot of stuff hidden at the bottom. Bathymetry the shape of the ocean floor is largely a result of a process called plate tectonics the outer rocky layer of the earth includes about a dozen large sections called tectonic plates that are arranged like a spherical jig saw puzzle floating on top of the earth s hot flowing mantle.

Oceans cover nearly 71 percent of earth s surface. An ocean is a huge body of salt water. There are four basic types of sediment of the sea floor. 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.

Mountains plains channels canyons exposed rocks and sediment covered areas. How to use ocean in a sentence. Back in 1977 a very interesting discovery was made on the deep ocean floor where no light penetrates. Plate tectonics and the ocean floor.

From land the ocean all looks the same. The ocean floor has the same general character as the land areas of the world. The lack of weathering and erosion in most areas however allows geological processes to be seen more clearly on. Oceanic crust is the uppermost layer of the oceanic portion of a tectonic plate it is composed of the upper oceanic crust with pillow lavas and a dike complex and the lower oceanic crust composed of troctolite gabbro and ultramafic cumulates.

Exploration of the seafloor and the earth s crust. They contain almost 98 percent of all the water on earth. While most life on this planet requires sunlight to live there is an. These vary from oozes made of carbonate from foraminiferal and calcareous phytoplankton and some silica that has settled through the water column.