Earth's crust

Earth's outer layer

The Earth's crust is the Earth's hard outer

layer. It is less than 1% of Earth's volume.
The crust is made up of different types of
rocks: igneous, metamorphic, and
sedimentary rocks.

Earth cutaway from the core to the

exosphere
Below the crust is the mantle. The crust
and the upper mantle make up the
lithosphere. The lithosphere is broken up
into tectonic plates that can move.

The crust is of two different types. One is

the continental crust (under the land) and
the other is the oceanic crust (under the
ocean).

1. The continental crust is thicker, 30 km

(20 mi) to 50 km (30 mi) thick. It is
mostly made of less dense, more
felsic rocks, such as granite.
2. The oceanic crust is thinner, 5 km (3
mi) to 10 km (6 mi) thick. It is made
 of denser, more mafic rocks, such as
basalt.

The temperature of the crust increases

with depth because of geothermal energy.
Where the crust meets the mantle the
temperatures can be between 200 °C
(392 °F) to 400 °C (752 °F).[1] The crust is
the coldest layer because it is exposed to
the atmosphere.
% by weight
Oxygen 46.6%

Silicon 27.7%

Aluminium 8.1%

Iron 5.0%

All ot hers 12.6%

Composition
 Abundance (atom fraction) of the chemical
elements in Earth's upper
continental crust as a function of the atomic
number.

Igneous rocks make up over 90% of Earth's

crust by volume.[2]p47 This is not
noticeable because they are mostly
covered by sedimentary and metamorphic
rocks.

A single family of silicates, the feldspars,

account for about half of the material in
the crust (60% by weight), and quartz is a
sizeable proportion of the rest. Other
common minerals are mica and
hornblende.

Only 8% of Earth's crust is non-silicate

minerals, and this includes carbonates,
sulfides, chlorides and oxides.

Formation of the crust

Earth's mantle and crust formed about 100
million years after the formation of the
planet, about 4.6 billion years ago. At first
the crust was very thin, and was probably
changed often as the tectonic plates
shifted around a lot more than they do
now. The crust would have been destroyed
many times by asteroids hitting Earth,
which was much more common in the Late
Heavy Bombardment.

The oldest oceanic basalt crust today is

only about 200 million years. Most of the
continental crust is much older. The oldest
continental crustal rocks on Earth are
cratons between 3.7 and 4.28 billion years
old.[3][4] These have been found in the
Narryer Gneiss Terrane in Western
Australia, in the Acasta Gneiss in the
Northwest Territories on the Canadian
Shield, and on the Fennoscandian Shield. A
few zircons at least 4.3 billion years old
have been found in the Narryer Gneiss
Terrane in Western Australia.

The average age of Earth's continental

crust is about 2.0 billion years.[5] Most
crustal rocks formed before 2.5 billion
years ago are in cratons. Such old
continental crust and the mantle below it
are less dense than other places in the
Earth. These are not easily destroyed
when the plates shift. The making of new
continental crust is linked to times of
major orogeny or mountain building. This
happens at the same time as the
formation of the supercontinents such as
Rodinia, Pangaea and Gondwana. The
crust forms in part by the coming together
of island arcs including granite and
metamorphic fold belts. They are kept
together partly by the subduction of the
mantle below the crust, which makes a
mantle on which the crust can float.

References
1. http://www.channel4.com/science/microsit
es/S/science/nature/journey.html Earth
2. Levin, Harold L. The Earth through time. 5th
ed, Saunders.
3. "Team finds Earth's 'oldest rocks' " (http://ne
ws.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/763902
4.stm) . 26 September 2008 – via
news.bbc.co.uk.
4. P.J. Patchett and S.D. Samson 2003. Ages
and growth ot the continental crust from
radiogenic isotopes. In The Crust (R.L.
Rudnick ed) volume 3, pages 321-348 of
Treatise on Geochemistry (H.D. Holland
and K.K. Turekian eds) Elsevier-Pergamon,
Oxford.
5. A.I.S. Kemp and C.J. Hawkesworth 2003.
Granitic perspectives on the generation and
 secular evolution of the continental crust. In
The Crust (R.L. Rudnick ed) volume 3,
pages 349-410 of Treatise on
Geochemistry (H.D. Holland and K.K.
Turekian eds), Elsevier-Pergamon, Oxford.

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