Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
oceanic crust
References & Edit History Related Topics
Images & Videos
Cross-sectional diagram of Earth's outer layers, showing oceanic and continental crust at the surface, the rigid lithosphere, the partially melted asthenosphere, and transitions from upper to lower mantle, with labeled depths and rock properties. Crew members aboard a drilling ship inspecting a rock core during a scientific expedition that succeeded for the first time in drilling through the upper oceanic crust. Cross-sectional diagram illustrating plate tectonics, showing oceanic and continental crust moving over the asthenosphere. It highlights divergent boundaries at oceanic ridges where crust forms, convergent boundaries at trenches with subduction zones where crust is destroyed, and a transform boundary with a fault. Features such as island arcs, rising magma, and hotspots are labeled. A world map uses color bands to show the age of Earth's oceanic crust in millions of years, with red marking the youngest crust along mid-ocean ridges and blue representing the oldest crust farther from spreading centers. Diagram showing seafloor spreading at a midocean ridge, with arrows indicating tectonic plates moving apart. Magma rises to form new seafloor, and bands of normal and reversed magnetic polarity are labeled on either side of the ridge. cross section of a tectonic plate
How does plate tectonics change Earth's surface?

oceanic crust: References & Edit History

Article Contributors

Primary Contributors

Other Contributors

  • Dana McConkey

Other Encyclopedia Britannica Contributors

Article History

Type Description Contributor Date
Add new Web site: BCcampus Open Publishing - The Geology of the Oceanic Crust. Sep 06, 2023
Add new Web site: University of Washington School of Oceanography - The Genesis of Oceanic Crust: Magma Injection, Hydrothermal Circulation, and Crustal Flow. Sep 10, 2015
Add new Web site: University of California - Berkeley Seismological Laboratory - Ocean Crust Composition. Sep 09, 2015
Text added clarifying the formation of oceanic crust at divergent plate boundaries and its destruction in subduction zones. Jan 07, 2014
New article added. Oct 08, 2009
View Changes:
Article History
Revised:
By: