Tectonic Fabric of the Atlantic Ocean Floor: Speculation vs. Reality

Abstract

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.

The Central Pacific Megatrend

“…A total-coverage multibeam sonarbased map (SASS) was compared to the (GEOSAT) satellite altimetry data set, and that test proved conclusively that the satellite altimetry data were in fact ground-truthed by real ocean-floor survey data (Smoot and Meyerhoff, 1995;Leybourne and Smoot, 1997). As was expected, there was a slight offset of less than 1.7 km, which is the footprint of the satellite.…”

Interpretation of the magnetic anomalies over the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Ridge using Swarm-A satellite

“…Heat flow data is available on https://www.ihfciugg.org/ and bathymetry data can be downloaded from https://topex.ucsd.edu/. Tectonically, the newly formed crust moves away from the ridge crest perpendicularly which results in E-W fracture zones (Smoot and Meyerhoff, 1995). The mechanism of seafloor spreading is positively correlated with the fracture zones.…”