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The Atlantis Massif is a prominent undersea massif
Massif

In geology, a massif is a section of a planet's Crust that is demarcated by geologic faults or flexures. In the Plate tectonics, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole....
, a dome-shaped region approximately 10 mi. (16 km) across and rising about 14,000 ft. (4250 m) from the sea floor, in the North Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres . It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface....
. It is located at approximately 30°N latitude just east of the intersection of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge, a divergent tectonics plate boundary located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and the longest mountain range in the world....
 with the Atlantis Transform Fault. The highest point of the massif is approximately 700 meters beneath the surface.

The massif was formed approximately 1.5-2.0 million years ago.






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The Atlantis Massif is a prominent undersea massif
Massif

In geology, a massif is a section of a planet's Crust that is demarcated by geologic faults or flexures. In the Plate tectonics, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole....
, a dome-shaped region approximately 10 mi. (16 km) across and rising about 14,000 ft. (4250 m) from the sea floor, in the North Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres . It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface....
. It is located at approximately 30°N latitude just east of the intersection of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge, a divergent tectonics plate boundary located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and the longest mountain range in the world....
 with the Atlantis Transform Fault. The highest point of the massif is approximately 700 meters beneath the surface.

The massif was formed approximately 1.5-2.0 million years ago. Geologic studies of the massif have indicated that it is not composed of the black basalt
Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually gray to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet....
 typical of the ocean floor, but rather of dense green peridotite
Peridotite

A peridotite is a dense, coarse-grained igneous rock, consisting mostly of the minerals olivine and pyroxene. Peridotite is ultramafic and ultrabasic, as the rock contains less than 45% silica....
 usually found in the mantle. The central dome is also corrugated and striated in a way that is representative of an exposed ultramafic core complex. It is believed that the massif was formed underneath the nearby Mid-Atlantic Ridge but was pulled underneath the ridge during the movement of the plates
Plate tectonics

Plate tectonics describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere. The theory encompasses the older concepts of continental drift, developed during the first decades of the 20th century by Alfred Wegener, and seafloor spreading, understood during the 1960s....
.

The Lost City hydrothermal field
Lost City (hydrothermal field)

Lost City is a field of hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic that differ significantly from the black smoker vents found in the late 1970s. The vents were discovered in December 2000 during a National Science Foundation expedition to the mid-Atlantic....
 is near the summit of the ridge.

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