Geology Of The Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean evolved from the Panthalassic Ocean when Rodinia rifted apart around 750 million years ago. The first ocean floor which is part of the current Pacific Plate, began to the west of the central Pacific, subsequently developing into the largest oceanic plate on Earth.
The tectonic plates continue to move today. The slowest spreading ridge is the Gakkel Ridge on the Arctic Ocean floor which spreads at less that 2.5 cm/yr while the fastest, the East Pacific Rise near Easter Island, has a spreading rate of over 15 cm/yr.
Read more about Geology Of The Pacific Ocean: History, Geological Origins of The Pacific Islands, Andesite Line, Earthquakes
Famous quotes containing the words pacific ocean, pacific and/or ocean:
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Here, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,”
—Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (1823–1896)