did continental drift cause sea floor spreading, or did sea floor spreading cause continental drift?

Question

Which one and why???? Please use specifics and evidence...

Answer 1

The continents do not float or plow around. The movement of continents is achieved through plate tectonics and sea floor spreading. Carl Sagan - It is more like the continents are being carried on a conveyor belt than floating or drifting. I wouldn't say that sea floor spreading causes continental drift because Wegener's theory of continental drift has been debunked. But sea floor spreading does cause the continents to move.

Answer 2

The process of "continental drift," now better known as plate tectonics, is driven by creation of new ocean crust at sea floor spreading sites like the mid-Atlantic Ridge and East Pacific Rise, and compensatory mechanisms of lithospheric subduction, often at continental margins. The net effect is the movement of continents. For example, 250 mya, essentially all of the Earth's continental crust was arrayed from pole to pole as a single continent, Pangea. The Atlantic Ocean as we know it today did not yet exist. About 200 mya, a rifting event followed by upwelling of plastic mantle magma initiated the spreading of the newly rifted lithospheric layer and the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. Radiotelescope arrays utilized for very long baseline interferometry provide convincing evidence that the Atlantic continues to widen, albeit at a rate of 1.8 cm per year. Similar activity at other sea floor spreading sites, coupled with the well known band of volcanic activity ringing the Pacific basin (the "Ring of Fire", itself indicative of lithospheric subduction), suggest that the Earth continues to be a tectonically active planet. Crustal plates slide on the surface of a slowly deforming plastic asthenosphere, and consequently the planetary surface is always in a state of remodeling.

Answer 3

Sea floor spreading is the mechanism for continental drift. I'll leave the rest up to you....

Answer 4

Or to put it another way, sea floor spreading is evidence of continental drift...

Answer 5

Continental drift is no longer and accepted theory. Its called Plate Tectonics.