continental crust

British

noun

geology that part of the earth's crust that underlies the continents and continental shelves

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

continental crust Scientific

/ kŏn′tə-nĕn′tl /

See under crust

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continental crust

The East Antarctic Fan-shaped Basin Province may represent one of the largest examples of rotational extension ever identified within continental crust.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2026

Isotopic geochemistry suggests the molten material came from Archean continental crust dating between 3.0 and 3.3 billion years old.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 1, 2026

That evidence points to the São Francisco craton, one of the oldest and most stable regions of South America's continental crust.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 1, 2026

Smye explained that Earth's continental crust, as it exists today, began forming about 3 billion years ago.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2025

Earth is all magma and continental crust and ocean.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023