Photo: Harry Hess argues that the continents had once been one, and have drifted apart. With the discovery of plate tectonics and the mapping of the earth into about 12 plates, plus the ...

Hess's puzzling guyots fit into the sea-floor spreading picture, as well. It's believed they were once-active volcanoes which rose above the water's surface before being eroded by the atmosphere ...

Scientists probing the bottom of the Pacific Ocean made a surprising discovery: animals living underneath the seafloor in an ...

This reduction, mostly resulting from a global slowdown in seafloor spreading, caused ocean basins to deepen. In addition, the researchers calculated that heat flowing into the ocean from the hot ...