the late) A. A. MeyerhofP"Almost all published charts of the world's ocean floors have been drawn deliberately to reflect the predictions of the plate-tectonics hypothesis. For example, the Atlantic Ocean floor is unvaryingly shown to be dominated by CI sinuous, north-south mid-ocean ridge, flanked on either side by abyssalplains, cleft at its crest by a rijit valley, und offset at more-or-less regular 40to 60-km intervals by east-west-striking fracture cones. However. it is now clear that as new, detailed, bathymetric surveys are being completed, this oversimplified portrayal of the Atlantic Basin is largely wrong. Thousands of bathymetric features present, many of them major, are wholly unexplained by plate tectonics. Others, predicted by plate tectonics, are totally absent. We show, on the basis of specific examples based on real data from the North Atlantic Ocean, that the real bathymetiy and the real tectonic fabricare very differentfrom the bathymetry and tectonic fabric portrayed (but rarely documented) in plate-tectonics publications. A new hypothesis is needed to explain the origin of the real bathymetry and tectonic fabric of the deep oceans. Such CI hypothesis could very wellprovide clues forfuture petroleum and other mineral exploration along the continental margins.