The Mid-Atlantic Ridge
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge separates North America from Eurasia in the north and South America from Africa farther south. Its path is broken into segments joined by transforms.
BOUNDARIES
Explore an example
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Plate colours identify regions, not risk.
Other spreading centres
The East Pacific Rise and the Indian Ocean ridges form other major spreading systems. Their relief and spreading rates differ; a ridge is not necessarily the geographical middle of an ocean.
Seafloor age across a ridge
Oceanic crust is youngest near an active spreading axis and generally older farther away. Age bands, offsets and missing crust preserve a more complicated history than distance alone.
Sources and map method
Plate outlines use Peter Bird's PB2002 model, distributed by Nordpil under the Open Data Commons Attribution licence. Coastlines and country outlines are Natural Earth public-domain data. Boundary detail is limited by the source model.
- USGS: This Dynamic Planet
- Seton et al. (2020): Oceanic crustal age and spreading parameters
- USGS: Oceanic transform faults and fracture zones
- Map dataset sources and licences
- PB2002 geometry and licence
- Natural Earth terms
Country lookup compares simplified land outlines with the plate model. Boundaries and historical coastlines are modelled features. This atlas explains geography; it does not predict earthquakes or provide site-specific hazard estimates.