John G. Sclater coauthored work linking ocean-floor depth and heat flux to the age of oceanic lithosphere. With Barry Parsons, he compared cooling models against both types of observation.[ref]
An analysis of the variation of ocean floor bathymetry and heat flow with age by Barry Parsons and John G. Sclater. Abstract: cooling/plate models tested with depth and heat flow
Cooling changes both the thermal gradient that drives heat loss and the mass density structure that affects subsidence. Their joint use constrains the thermal evolution more strongly than either observation alone.
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