Is The Oceanic Floor Basalt

Basalt is the dark heavy volcanic rock that makes up most of the world s oceanic crust.

Is the oceanic floor basalt.

The ocean floor is underlain by a layer of basalt that constitutes the crust or uppermost layer of the earth in that region. The boundary between these two layers is called the mohorovicic discontinuity. What they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around mid ocean ridges was divided into matching stripes on either side of the ridge. Basalt rocks are in some cases classified after their titanium ti content in high ti and low ti varieties.

The most voluminous volcanic rocks of the ocean floor are the mid oceanic ridge basalts which are derived from low potassium tholeiitic magmas. Some of it erupts on land too but to a first approximation basalt is an oceanic rock. As it turns out most of the ocean floor is basalt and most of the continents are granite. Basalt is found by comparing oceanic plates beneath the ocean floor.

Included in this category are most basalts of the ocean floor most large oceanic islands and continental flood basalts such as the columbia river plateau. Basalt is denser than granite because basalt is a an oceanic type of rock so it has had more pressure from the ocean making it denser than granite because granite is a continental type of rock. These rocks have low concentrations of large ion lithophile elements lile light rare earth elements lree volatile elements and other highly incompatible elements. Compared to the familiar granite of the continents basalt ba salt is darker denser and finer grained.