Knowra Atlantic Ocean Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the world’s second-largest ocean, extending between the Americas and Europe and Africa from the Arctic Ocean to the Southern Ocean.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge : A mostly underwater mountain range running through the Atlantic basin, where tectonic plates move apart and new oceanic crust forms. This ridge marks the Atlantic’s principal zone of seafloor creation and basin widening.
Ocean basin : A large depression in Earth’s crust that holds ocean water and is bounded by continental margins or other oceanic features. The Atlantic is a basin whose shape guides currents and records seafloor history.
North Atlantic right whale : A critically endangered baleen whale found in the western North Atlantic, where it migrates along the eastern coast of North America. Its survival is directly affected by shipping, fishing gear, and changing Atlantic habitat.
Pangaea : A supercontinent that assembled most of Earth’s landmasses during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. The Atlantic began opening when Pangaea fragmented.
Atlantic slave trade : The forced transportation of millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. The ocean became the route for a vast system of forced migration and exploitation.
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation : A system of Atlantic currents that carries warm surface water northward and returns colder, denser water at depth. It links the Atlantic’s surface and deep waters, redistributing heat across the basin.
Continental shelf : The submerged, gently sloping edge of a continent extending from the shoreline to the continental slope. Shelves border much of the Atlantic and support productive coastal seas.
Atlantic cod : A commercially important fish native to the North Atlantic, historically central to fisheries on both sides of the ocean. Its population declines illustrate the ecological and economic costs of overfishing.
Opening of the Atlantic Ocean : The geological process by which rifting and seafloor spreading separated the Americas from Europe and Africa. This event established the Atlantic basin and its present continental arrangement.
Columbian Exchange : The transfer of plants, animals, people, diseases, and cultures between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492. Atlantic crossings enabled ecological and demographic exchanges that reshaped societies worldwide.
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