Great Meteor Seamount

Great Meteor Seamount
Great Meteor Seamount at the southern edge of the Atlantis-Meteor Seamount Complex
Summit depth	270 m (890 ft)
Height	4,500 m (14,800 ft)
Summit area	50x28 km2 (1465 km2)[1]
Location
Location	North Atlantic Ocean, 1,000 km (620 mi) south of the Azores
Coordinates	29°57′10.6″N 28°35′31.3″W / 29.952944°N 28.592028°W / 29.952944; -28.592028
Geology
Type	Guyot
Volcanic arc/chain	Seewarte Seamounts
History
Discovery date	1938
Discovered by	Meteor

The Great Meteor Seamount, also called the Great Meteor Tablemount, is a guyot and the largest seamount in the North Atlantic with a volume of 24,000 km³ (5,800 cu mi). It is one of the Seewarte Seamounts, rooted on a large terrace located south of the Azores Plateau. The crust underlying Great Meteor has an age of 85 million years, deduced from the magnetic anomaly 34 (An34) at this location.^[2]

The shallow and flat summit of the Great Meteor Seamount, ranging between 150 and 300 m (490 and 980 ft) below sea level, suggests that it may have emerged sometime in the past 30 million years.^[3] It is covered by a 150 to 600 m (490 to 1,970 ft) thick layer of limestone, pyroclastic rocks and bioclastic sandstones.^[4] Dredged basalts from the top of the eastern and southeastern flanks of the seamount have been K–Ar dated 10.7 ± 0.5 and 16.3 ± 0.4 million years old, respectively.^[5] The oldest sample has been ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dated at 17 ± 0.3 million years old.^[6]

Two small seamounts exist just southwest of Great Meteor and are encircled by the −3800 m bathymetric line. These are the Closs Seamount, roughly oriented NNE-SSW, with its peak at 1,400 m (4,600 ft) depth and covering an area of approximately 390 km² (150 sq mi), and the Little Meteor Seamount, located NNE of Closs, with over 960 km² (370 sq mi) and a flat top 400 m (1,300 ft) below sea level.

The German research vessel Meteor discovered the tablemount in 1938. It was given the name Great Meteor Bank, a designation still used in the official GEBCO gazetteer.