“The ocean floor of the Atlantic Ocean is the site of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a divergent boundary between tectonic plates. A divergent boundary means that the tectonic plates are moving away from each other. In this case, the North American and South American tectonic plates are moving away from the Eurasian and African tectonic plates. This creates a gap in the ocean floor through which magma seeps up and hardens to form new ocean floor, (this process is called sea-floor spreading)”. The rate of North Atlantic spreading is about 25 mm/year, due to the formation of new crust at the mid-Atlantic ridge and the (relative) westward motion of the North American Plate; the Eurasian Plate is moving (relatively) eastward and sliding over
