What is the Mid Atlantic Ridge?
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean mountain ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. It separates the Eurasian Plate and North American Plate in the North Atlantic, and the African Plate from the South American Plate in the South Atlantic. This rift marks the actual boundary between adjacent tectonic plates, where magma from the mantle reaches the seafloor, erupting as lava and producing new crustal material for the plates. What began as a small crack in the Earth’s crust is now the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a giant undersea mountain range. As magma rises to escape along this ridge new crust is formed, sea-floors spread, and continents drift around the globe. In the late 18th century Benjamin Franklin hypothesized that Africa and South America were once joined. We now know that he was right. Approximately 20 million years ago these two continents were one. Then a giant rift, or separation, developed between them. As the two land masses sepa
