image: Marine gravity model of the North Atlantic (10 mGal contours). Red dots show locations of earthquakes with magnitudes > 5.5 and they highlight the present-day location of the seafloor spreading ridges and transform faults. This gravity information shows the details of the plate tectonic history of the rifting of these continents including the subtle signatures of fracture zones that are currently buried by sediment. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Oct. 3, 2014 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by D.T. Sandwell at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA, and colleagues was titled, 'New global marine gravity model from CryoSat-2 and Jason-1 reveals buried tectonic structure.' view more
Credit: [Credit: David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography]