The Wyville-Thomson Ridge is a bathymetric feature of the North Atlantic ocean floor ca. 200 km in length, located between the Faroe Islands

Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...

 and Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. The ridge separates the Faroe-Shetland Channel to the north from the Rockall Trough to the south. Its significance lies in the fact that it forms part of the barrier between the colder bottom waters of the Arctic and the warmer waters of the North Atlantic.

The Wyville-Thomson Ridge is named after Charles Wyville Thomson

Charles Wyville Thomson

Sir Charles Wyville Thomson was a Scottish zoologist and chief scientist on the Challenger expedition.-Career:...

 who pioneered the first exploration of the area.

Geology

The Wyville-Thomson Ridge, and the smaller but similar Ymir Ridge, form the northern boundary to the Rockall Basin

Rockall Basin

The Rockall Basin is a large sedimentary basin that lies to the west of Ireland and the United Kingdom beneath the major deepwater area known as the Rockall Trough. It is named after Rockall a rocky islet lying 301.4 km west of St Kilda...

, a mainly Mesozoic

Mesozoic

The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...

 rift

Rift

In geology, a rift or chasm is a place where the Earth's crust and lithosphere are being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics....

 structure. The current form of the ridge is an anticline

Anticline

In structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core. The term is not to be confused with antiform, which is a purely descriptive term for any fold that is convex up. Therefore if age relationships In structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is...

 with up to 2 km of amplitude, formed by a period of shortening during the Eocene

Eocene

The Eocene Epoch, lasting from about 56 to 34 million years ago , is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Palaeocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the...

 to Miocene

Miocene

The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about . The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words and and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene...

 period. This fold is interpreted to have formed by the reactivation of a pre-existing fault, and is, therefore, classified as an inversion

Inversion (geology)

In structural geology inversion or basin inversion relates to the relative uplift of a sedimentary basin or similar structure as a result of crustal shortening. This normally excludes uplift developed in the footwalls of later extensional faults, or uplift caused by mantle plumes...

structure.