Seafloor spreading on the Amsterdam-St. Paul hotspot plateau

Nonvolcanic seafloor spreading and corner-flow rotation

[1] Drilling during ODP Leg 209, dredging, and submersible dives have delineated an anomalous stretch of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge north and south of the 15 200N Fracture Zone. The seafloor here consists dominantly of mantle peridotite with gabbroic intrusions that in places is covered by a thin, discontinuous extrusive volcanic layer. Thick lithosphere (10–20 km) in this region inhibits magma fro...

Recognizing detachment-mode seafloor spreading in the deep geological past

Large-offset oceanic detachment faults are a characteristic of slow- and ultraslow-spreading ridges, leading to the formation of oceanic core complexes (OCCs) that expose upper mantle and lower crustal rocks on the seafloor. The lithospheric extension accommodated by these structures is now recognized as a fundamentally distinct "detachment-mode" of seafloor spreading compared to classical magm...

Modeling seafloor-spreading rates through time: A comment

Hydrothermal vent fields and chemosynthetic biota on the world's deepest seafloor spreading centre

The Mid-Cayman spreading centre is an ultraslow-spreading ridge in the Caribbean Sea. Its extreme depth and geographic isolation from other mid-ocean ridges offer insights into the effects of pressure on hydrothermal venting, and the biogeography of vent fauna. Here we report the discovery of two hydrothermal vent fields on the Mid-Cayman spreading centre. The Von Damm Vent Field is located on ...

Constraining South Atlantic Growth With Seafloor Spreading Data

The opening of the South Atlantic Ocean is one of the most extensively researched problems in plate kinematics. Models of it have proliferated since Bullard, Everett and Smith [8] published the first-ever computer-assisted reconstruction in the 60s. In recent years, focus has shifted to understanding the early stages of continental separation. General agreement exists about ocean opening being ...