The Carlsberg Ridge is the northern section of the Central Indian Ridge, a divergent

tectonic plate Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

boundary between the African plate and the Indo-Australian plate, traversing the western regions of the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

. The ridge of which the Carlsberg Ridge is a part extends northward from a triple point junction near the island of

Rodrigues Rodrigues ( ; Mauritian Creole, Creole: ) is a Autonomous administrative division, autonomous Outer islands of Mauritius, outer island of the Republic of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, about east of Mauritius. It is part of the Mascarene Isl ...

(the Rodrigues Triple Point) to a junction with the

Owen fracture zone The Owen fracture zone (OFZ), though Misnomer, misnamed as a fracture zone, is a transform fault in the northwest Indian Ocean that separates the Arabian plate, Arabian and African plates from the Indian plate. Extending north-northeast from whe ...

. The ridge started its northwards propagation in the late

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian ( ) is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) geologic timescale, the latest age (geology), age (uppermost stage (stratigraphy), stage) of the Late Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or Upper Cretaceous series (s ...

and reached the incipient Arabian Sea in the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

. Then it continued to accrete basalt but did not propagate for nearly 30 Ma. Then, in the early

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

it started to propagate westwards towards the Afar hot spot, opening the Gulf of Aden. The Carlsberg Ridge is seismically active, with a major

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

being recorded by the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

at 7.6 on the

moment magnitude scale The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mwg, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. was defined in a 1979 paper ...

on July 15, 2003. The submarine ridge was discovered by the Danish research vessel Dana during the '' Carlsberg Foundation's Oceanographic Expedition around the world'' (1928–1930), better known as the '' 2nd Dana Expedition'', and named after the

Carlsberg Foundation Carlsberg Foundation () is a not-for-profit organization that was founded by J. C. Jacobsen in 1876, by allocating some of his shares in the Carlsberg Brewery to fund and operate the Carlsberg Laboratory and the Museum of National History at ...

, which funded the entire expedition and subsequent analysis and publication of results.Wolff, Torben (1967). Danish Expeditions on the Seven Seas. Copenhagen: Rhodos.

Notes

External links

Structure & Evolution of the Carlsberg Ridge

Processing & presentation of multi-beam echosounder data on Carlsberg and Central Indian ridges
Underwater ridges of the Indian Ocean {{tectonics-stub