A Look At Sediments Part 3

A Look at Sediments

But the question concerning the paucity of elements in sea water still persists. Because of the paucity of so many of the chemicals in the oceans, one might conclude that they must have been taken out of solution in some manner, even though sea water does not appear to be with many, if any, of the chemicals that enter it.

Now the mechanisms of solution in, and the removal from, sea water are rather complex. Scientists are busily engaged in attempting to understand them. But if the chemicals are not in the sea water, they must be on the sea floor.

Therefore, even though the chemicals in the water are not proportional quantitatively to those in the rocks, surely the remainder would be found on the sea floor, with the overall chemical content reflecting an ancient ocean. Such expectation, however, cannot be supported by the facts.

Obviously much more work must be done before a complete analysis of the quantity and composition of the sea floor sediments can be known. However, many cores have been taken already, and there is much literature available concerning this question.

Present knowledge is summed up perhaps in the comment of H. Kuenen: “The differences in composition between oceanic and continental sediments, both as to major constituents and trace elements are large.”(9) In other words, whether the composition of sea water or the composition of the ocean sediments is studied, no data has been collected yet to substantiate a long time relationship between the oceans and the continents. Wilson sets forth these problems:

The failure to recover any rocks older than Creataceous from the ocean floors suggests that the ocean basins may be younger than the continents. It has also become evident that the petrology, sedimentations, and structural geology of ocean chasms are quite different from these of continents . . .the ocean basins and oceanic islands are dramatically different from continents in crustal thickness, age, composition, ore deposits, structures, magnetic anomalies, and in the patterns and characteristics of their active mountain belts and earthquakes. Several continents have rocks at least 3.2 x 10^9 years old, which is 20 times the age of the oldest oceanic island, dredging, or core.(10) Thus, because of the tremendous chemical disproportions between the oceans and the continents, the most probable conclusion is that the oceans are very young.