The first-known direct observations of a seafloor spreading event at a mid-ocean ridge in the Indian Ocean are presented in ...

Researchers at the French National Center of Scientific Research have become the first to ...

Earlier study of the region had shown that the spreading in the area occurs at an average rate of a bit over 60 millimeters a ...

Scientists directly observed a massive underwater volcanic eruption that created new oceanic crust, offering rare insight ...

For most of human history, the creation of new ocean floor has been something inferred rather than witnessed. Geologists ...

At nearly 65,000 kilometers long, the mid-ocean ridge system is the longest mountain range in the world. Running beneath the ocean's surface, mid-ocean ridges are formed at divergent plate boundaries, ...

Learn how new ocean floor formed in real time as earthquakes, sinking crust, and fresh lava reshaped the Southeast Indian Ridge. A couple of months after a French-led research team anchored a set of ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

Image: Tiny crystals called zircons are used to date oceanic crust. A newly developed method that detects tiny bits of zircon in rock reliably predicts the age of ocean crust more than 99 percent of ...