This Is What The Earth Would Look Like Without Its Oceans

This is a still shot of a digital map of the seafloor's
geology.
You've never seen our planet quite like this before.
Researchers in Australia have mapped the Earth's
seafloor in unprecedented detail. The digital map --
published online in the journal Geology on August 5,
2015 -- shows an ocean-less Earth that's color-coded
with 13 hues to indicate different geological features,
such as yellow for sand, red for volcanic rock, and pink
for shells and coral, The Sydney Morning Herald
reported.
And it's a real eye-opener.
"Our new map brings out the enormous ecological and
geological complexity of the seafloor that before we had
no idea about," Dr. Dietmar Muller, a geophysicist at the
University of Sydney in Australia and co-author of a
paper detailing the map, told the newspaper.
Of course, there are other detailed maps of Earth's
seafloor. But this is the most up-to-date digital map,
based on 40 years of data. Until now, the most recent
map we had of the seafloor was drawn by hand in the
1970s.
To create the new map, the researchers analyzed about
15,000 seafloor samples collected over the past half-
century by research ships from all around the world. The
researchers then used an artificial intelligence technique
called "support vector machine"
to build the digital map based on their analyses.
The map is beautiful -- but that's not all. The
researchers say it sheds light on the global distribution
of seafloor sediments and gives new insights into the
effects of climate change.
"In order to understand environmental change in the
oceans we need to better understand what is preserved
in the geological record in the seabed ," Dr. Adriana
Dutkiewicz, a sedimentologist at the university and lead
author of the paper, said in a written statement. "The
deep ocean floor is a graveyard with much of it made up
of the remains of microscopic sea creatures called
phytoplankton, which thrive in sunlit surface waters. The
composition of these remains can help decipher how
oceans have responded in the past to climate change."