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The 70 pages that link to Seafloor spreading, each with the reason it gives.

• Plate tectonicsRelated: The process that both moves plates apart and records their motion in the ocean floor.

• SubductionRelated: Crust made at ridges must be destroyed somewhere; subduction is that somewhere.

• Atlantic OceanRelated: It explains how the Atlantic basin opened and continues to widen.

• GondwanaRelated: New ocean floor widened the gaps between fragments of Gondwana.

• PaleomagnetismRelated: Magnetic stripe symmetry across ridges confirmed spreading in 1963.

• Hydrothermal ventRelated: Ridges create fractures and heat sources that help drive vent circulation.

• Oceanic crustRelated: Spreading carries young crust away from its birthplace.

• Pacific PlateRelated: It adds young crust to the Pacific Plate at divergent boundaries.

• Mantle convectionRelated: Hess explicitly framed spreading as the upper limb of convection cells.

• Continental driftBroader topic: The process that finally made continental motion physically credible.

• Mid-Atlantic RidgeRelated: The ridge is the surface expression of spreading; the two cannot be explained apart.

• Continental crustCompared with: This process renews oceanic crust on timescales that rarely erase continental crust.

• Tethys OceanRelated: Spreading created oceanic crust within Tethys as surrounding plates separated.

• North American PlateRelated: It created much of the Atlantic seafloor separating this plate from Europe and Africa.

• Arabian PlateRelated: It is occurring along the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden margins.

• Transform faultRelated: The discovery whose odd ridge offsets turned out to be transforms.

• Alfred WegenerRelated: The decisive vindication: measured seafloor motion made continental movement unavoidable.

• Hotspot volcanismRelated: Its evidence for moving seafloor made Wilson’s moving-plate interpretation of hotspot tracks plausible.

• Continental riftingNarrower topic: Continental rifting can progress into this process once a new ocean basin forms.

• African PlateRelated: It forms new crust along ridges bordering the African Plate.

• Mariana TrenchRelated: The process that produced the old, dense Pacific crust now sinking at the trench.

• Wilson cycleRelated: Stage two: spreading makes a young narrow sea grow into a wide ocean.

• LaurentiaRelated: It widened oceans that separated Laurentia from neighboring continents.

• Eustatic sea-level changeRelated: Changes in ridge volume and ocean-floor age affect the space available for seawater.

• Indian PlateRelated: Spreading created oceanic crust that traveled with India before being consumed or sutured.

• Rift valleyRelated: Continental rifting can progress into seafloor spreading and a new ocean basin.

• Back-arc basinRelated: Sustained extension can develop into spreading that forms new basin crust.

• Indo-Australian plateRelated: Spreading formed much of the ocean floor that moves with the plate.

• LaurasiaRelated: New ocean floor widened the Atlantic as North America moved away from Eurasia.

• MagnetostratigraphyRelated: Spreading carries successive polarity records away from ridges in datable stripes.

• Tectonic plateRelated: It creates oceanic plate material and pushes plates apart.

• East Pacific RiseNarrower topic: It is the process that drives crust formation along the rise.

• Marie TharpRelated: The rift valley Tharp found is where spreading begins; the map preceded the theory.

• South American PlateRelated: It generates crust along the plate’s eastern boundary with the African Plate.

• AsthenosphereRelated: Plate tectonics turned the asthenosphere from inference into the engine bed of moving plates.

• Divergent boundaryRelated: It is the main mechanism that creates ocean floor as plates separate.

• Harry HessBroader topic: This is the process Hess proposed to explain how ocean basins and continents change.

• Antarctic PlateRelated: It adds new crust along ridges bordering the Antarctic Plate.

• Arthur HolmesRelated: Its discovery later helped explain how mantle motion could move plates.

• Slab pullRelated: Supplies the young, buoyant lithosphere that ages and densifies into sinking slabs.

• Gulf of CaliforniaNarrower topic: It helps explain the young oceanic crust beneath the gulf’s central basins.

• Ocean drillingRelated: Drilling recovered progressively older crust away from ridges, supporting this process.

• Oceanic lithosphereRelated: Spreading adds new crust and mantle to oceanic lithosphere at ridge axes.

• Passive marginRelated: It forms oceanic crust after rifting separates the continental plates.

• Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesisRelated: The hypothesis supplied the testable magnetic prediction that confirmed Hess's otherwise speculative mechanism.

• Wadati–Benioff zoneRelated: The zones mark where spreading's conveyor belt turns downward into the mantle.

• Deep Sea Drilling ProjectNarrower topic: The project tested this process by measuring the ages of sediments above oceanic crust.

• Magnetic anomalyRelated: Spreading carries magnetized crust outward, arranging anomalies into parallel stripes.

• Macquarie IslandRelated: The island’s geology preserves evidence of spreading along the Macquarie Ridge.

• Marine geologyRelated: It explains how much of the ocean floor forms and expands.