Mid-Atlantic Ridge

[1] A ridge under the northern Atlantic Ocean was first inferred by Matthew Fontaine Maury in 1853, based on soundings by the USS Dolphin.

[2][3] A team of scientists on board, led by Charles Wyville Thomson, discovered a large rise in the middle of the Atlantic while investigating the future location for a transatlantic telegraph cable.

[4] The existence of such a ridge was confirmed by sonar in 1925[5] and was found to extend around Cape Agulhas into the Indian Ocean by the German Meteor expedition.

This bulge is thought to be caused by upward convective forces in the asthenosphere pushing the oceanic crust and lithosphere.

The Fundy Basin on the Atlantic coast of North America between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada is evidence of the ancestral Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

A bathymetric map of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (shown in light blue in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean)
Pangaea's separation (animated)
Basaltic rocks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge observed by the Hercules ROV during the 2005 Lost City Expedition