How old is oldest seafloor

By Emily Benson. The oldest known bit of oceanic crust is sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The oldest patch of undisturbed oceanic crust on Earth may lie deep beneath the eastern Mediterranean Sea — and at about million years old, it beats the previous record by more than million years. Understanding where they developed can help us figure out what Earth looked like as continents formed, broke apart, and shifted around the globe hundreds of millions of years ago.

Oceanic crust is formed when hot magma wells up at mid-ocean ridges, then slowly spreads out towards the edges of the ocean. Granot suggests the area of ancient crust may be part of the ancient Tethys Ocean, which would mean that body of water formed 50 million years earlier than previously thought.

He also tells Mosher it may be from an unrelated ocean ridge. Uri ten Brink of the U. Geological Survey tells Benson that the heavy layer of sediment may make magnetic signals difficult to interpret correctly.

He also says the survey area is small, which makes it difficult to identify magnetic mineral stripes. As the plates move, new sea floor can be created. The plates form three different kinds of boundaries: convergent, divergent, and transform. Convergent boundaries are also called collision boundaries because they are areas where two plates collide.

At transform boundaries, the plates slide and grind past one another. The divergent boundaries are the areas where plates are moving apart from one another. Where plates move apart, new crustal material is formed from molten magma from below the Earth's surface. It gets so dense, that it sinks in the upper mantle subduction. This is like a giant recycling system for the oceanic lithosphere. As the continental crust is lighter than the oceanic crust, the continental crust cannot subduct.

We therefore still have some very old continental rocks at the surface of the Earth. Skip to main content. Climate Sea Levels Why will sea level rise not be the same everywhere? How can we date corals? Geology and Tectonics Geology How do we know the age of the seafloor? Why is the seafloor so recent and the continental crust so old? Where do we find the oldest continental rocks and the oldest seafloor?

What are the different types of rocks? What is a fossil and what are they used for? What are hydrothermal vents, and why do we find them along mid-ocean ridges? Seismology What is a seismic wave? What is the difference between body waves and surface waves, and between P-waves and S-waves?