Relief, Sediments, and Rocks of the Ocean Floor

Abstract

Oceans and seas cover 70% of the Earth’s surface. If we subtract the area of the continental shelf and epicontinental seas, which are submerged parts of the continents, the share of the oceans proper and deep seas is 50%. General ideas of the structure and evolution of the Earth’s crust quite obviously cannot be obtained without taking its oceanic half into account. It is only two decades or so ago that scientists began to unfold the mysteries of the structure of the ocean floor. This became possible because of the development of a number of new methods of research, mainly geophysical, and because of the introduction into common practice of new technical means, above all, specially equipped research ships.