Divergent Boundaries

At divergent boundaries where tectonic plates move apart, there will be upwelling material from the mantle to create new seafloor.

A major example of a divergent boundary is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

This illustration is from Wikipedia and may be freely used. It is available in higher resolution from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mid-atlantic_ridge.jpg
This is another depiction of the Mid-Atlantic-Ridge. It is a portion of an image from the USGS site and a part of their discussion of plate motions.

The extent of separation associated with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is about 5600 km and the extreme separation exhibits an age of about 180 million years. This gives an average velocity of separation of about 3.1 cm/yr with relative rates scaled from 2.8 to 4.4 cm/yr. The current rate of spreading is about 2.5 cm/year, showing general consistency with the overall distance and measured time.

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