Why the Earth's Crust Is So Important

Earth's Core
Artwork of the Earth's core and magnetosphere.

ANDRZEJ WOJCICKI/Getty Images

The Earth's crust is an extremely thin layer of rock that makes up the outermost solid shell of our planet. In relative terms, it's thickness is like that of the skin of an apple. It amounts to less than half of 1 percent of the planet's total mass but plays a vital role in most of Earth's natural cycles. 

The crust can be thicker than 80 kilometers in some spots and less than one kilometer thick in others. Underneath it lies the mantle, a layer of silicate rock approximately 2700 kilometers thick. The mantle accounts for the bulk of the Earth.

The crust is composed of many different types of rocks that fall into three main categories: igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. However, most of those rocks originated as either granite or basalt. The mantle beneath is made of peridotite. Bridgmanite, the most common mineral on Earth, is found in the deep mantle. 

How We Know the Earth Has a Crust

We didn't know the Earth had a crust until the early 1900s. Up until then, all we knew was that our planet wobbles in relation to the sky as if it had a large, dense core -- at least, astronomical observations told us so. Then along came seismology, which brought us a new type of evidence from below: seismic velocity.

Seismograph Machine Room
Records of seismic waves allow seismologists to locate and measure the size of events like these, and to map the Earth's internal structure. jamesbenet/Getty Images 

Seismic velocity measures the speed at which earthquake waves propagate through the different materials (i.e. rocks) below the surface. With a few important exceptions, seismic velocity within the Earth tends to increase with depth. 

In 1909, a paper by the seismologist Andrija Mohorovicic established a sudden change in seismic velocity -- a discontinuity of some sort -- about 50 kilometers deep in the Earth. Seismic waves bounce off it (reflect) and bend (refract) as they go through it, the same way that light behaves at the discontinuity between water and air. That discontinuity named the Mohorovicic discontinuity or "Moho" is the accepted boundary between the crust and mantle.

Crusts and Plates

The crust and tectonic plates are not the same. Plates are thicker than the crust and consist of the crust plus the shallow mantle just beneath it. This stiff and brittle two-layered combination is called the ​lithosphere ("stony layer" in scientific Latin). The lithospheric plates lie on a layer of softer, more plastic mantle rock called the asthenosphere ("weak layer"). The asthenosphere allows the plates to move slowly over it like a raft in thick mud. 

We know that the Earth's outer layer is made of two grand categories of rocks: basaltic and granitic. Basaltic rocks underlie the seafloors and granitic rocks make up the continents. We know that the seismic velocities of these rock types, as measured in the lab, match those seen in the crust down as far as the Moho. Therefore we're confident that the Moho marks a real change in rock chemistry. The Moho isn't a perfect boundary because some crustal rocks and mantle rocks can masquerade as the other. However, everyone who talks about the crust, whether in seismological or petrological terms, fortunately, means the same thing.

In general, then, there are two kinds of crust: oceanic crust (basaltic) and continental crust (granitic).

Oceanic Crust

Oceanic Crust
An illustration of oceanic crust. Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images 

Oceanic crust covers about 60 percent of the Earth's surface. Oceanic crust is thin and young -- no more than about 20 km thick and no older than about 180 million years. Everything older has been pulled underneath the continents by subduction. Oceanic crust is born at the mid-ocean ridges, where plates are pulled apart. As that happens, the pressure upon the underlying mantle is released and the peridotite there responds by starting to melt. The fraction that melts becomes basaltic lava, which rises and erupts while the remaining peridotite becomes depleted.

The mid-ocean ridges migrate over the Earth like Roombas, extracting this basaltic component from the peridotite of the mantle as they go. This works like a chemical refining process. Basaltic rocks contain more silicon and aluminum than the peridotite left behind, which has more iron and magnesium. Basaltic rocks are also less dense. In terms of minerals, basalt has more feldspar and amphibole, less olivine and pyroxene, than peridotite. In geologist's shorthand, oceanic crust is mafic while oceanic mantle is ultramafic.

Oceanic crust, being so thin, is a very small fraction of the Earth -- about 0.1 percent -- but its life cycle serves to separate the contents of the upper mantle into a heavy residue and a lighter set of basaltic rocks. It also extracts the so-called incompatible elements, which don't fit into mantle minerals and move into the liquid melt. These, in turn, move into the continental crust as plate tectonics proceeds. Meanwhile, the oceanic crust reacts with seawater and carries some of it down into the mantle.

Continental Crust

Continental crust is thick and old -- on average about 50 km thick and about 2 billion years old -- and it covers about 40 percent of the planet. Whereas almost all of the oceanic crust is underwater, most of the continental crust is exposed to the air.

The continents slowly grow over geologic time as oceanic crust and seafloor sediments are pulled beneath them by subduction. The descending basalts have the water and incompatible elements squeezed out of them, and this material rises to trigger more melting in the so-called subduction factory.

The continental crust is made of granitic rocks, which have even more silicon and aluminum than the basaltic oceanic crust. They also have more oxygen thanks to the atmosphere. Granitic rocks are even less dense than basalt. In terms of minerals, granite has even more feldspar and less amphibole than basalt and almost no pyroxene or olivine. It also has abundant quartz. In geologist's shorthand, continental crust is felsic.

Continental crust makes up less than 0.4 percent of the Earth, but it represents the product of a double refining process, first at mid-ocean ridges and second at subduction zones. The total amount of continental crust is slowly growing.

The incompatible elements that end up in the continents are important because they include the major radioactive elements uranium, thorium, and potassium. These create heat, which makes the continental crust act like an electric blanket on top of the mantle. The heat also softens thick places in the crust, like the Tibetan Plateau, and makes them spread sideways.

Continental crust is too buoyant to return to the mantle. That's why it is, on average, so old. When continents collide, the crust can thicken to almost 100 km, but that is temporary because it soon spreads out again. The relatively thin skin of limestones and other sedimentary rocks tend to stay on the continents, or in the ocean, rather than return to the mantle. Even the sand and clay that is washed off into the sea returns to the continents on the conveyor belt of the oceanic crust. Continents are truly permanent, self-sustaining features of the Earth's surface.

What the Crust Means

The crust is a thin but important zone where dry, hot rock from the deep Earth reacts with the water and oxygen of the surface, making new kinds of minerals and rocks. It's also where plate-tectonic activity mixes and scrambles these new rocks and injects them with chemically active fluids. Finally, the crust is the home of life, which exerts strong effects on rock chemistry and has its own systems of mineral recycling. All of the interesting and valuable variety in geology, from metal ores to thick beds of clay and stone, finds its home in the crust and nowhere else.

It should be noted that the Earth isn't the only planetary body with a crust. Venus, Mercury, Mars and the Earth's Moon have one as well. 

Edited by Brooks Mitchell

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Alden, Andrew. "Why the Earth's Crust Is So Important." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/all-about-the-earths-crust-1441114. Alden, Andrew. (2023, April 5). Why the Earth's Crust Is So Important. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/all-about-the-earths-crust-1441114 Alden, Andrew. "Why the Earth's Crust Is So Important." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/all-about-the-earths-crust-1441114 (accessed March 19, 2024).