RRS James Cook cruise JC007, 5 March 2007 – 17 April 2007
Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the Earth's crust seems to be missing entirely. Instead, the mantle - the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick - is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface. It has been described as being like an open wound on the surface of the Earth. What scientists don't know is whether the ocean crust was first developed, and then ripped away by huge geological faults, or whether it never even developed in the first place.
...an image from the tripod camera, showing the rig sitting on bare rock, covered in the foreground by a dusting of white sediment. Note the leg of the drill rig, and a sea urchin for scale in the centre of the picture.
From EIU 'The Bottom of the Atlantic' :
'The absence of thick sediment on the level floor presents "another of many scientific riddles our expedition propounded." It indicates that the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean on both sides of the Ridge was only very recently formed. At the same time, on the flanks of the Ridge the layers of sediment in some places are "thousands of feet thick, as was expected."
(V quotes from 'New Discoveries on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge' National Geographic Magazine, Vol XCVI, No. 5 (November 1949).
There's no mystery...the continents moved apart, the Mexican did what Mexicans do; he WALKED!