This may help confirm confirm geologists' long-held suspicions that foundering allows the planet to generate its lighter continental crust from the denser mix of minerals beneath. The Earth's ...

Beyond the outer core lies the mantle, a 1,800-mile-thick layer of viscous molten rock on which Earth's outermost layer, the crust, rests. On land, the continental crust is an average of 19 miles ...

Continental plates are usually quite thick (between 35 to 70 km ... Continental and oceanic plates all fit together to form the outer crust of the planet. Eight major plates are named on the ...

Continental crust is generally higher in silica ... then the crust can become very thick, pushing up mountain ranges such as the Himalayan belt. Physical boundaries such as rivers, oceans or ...

Crust The crust is the outer layer of the Earth on which we live. It is the thinnest layer and is between 5 and 90 km thick ... mainly under the ocean, or continental, and mainly found under ...