mantle rock

noun

Physical Geography.

1. the layer of disintegrated and decomposed rock fragments, including soil, just above the solid rock of the earth's crust; regolith.

Word History and Origins

Origin of mantle rock¹

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

The plates are a layered combination of buoyant crust and more dense upper mantle rock.

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But in one area south of the line, near the eastern border of Bhutan, a trio of springs also contained mantle signatures— a hint that one section of the Indian Plate might be peeling apart, with hot mantle rock flowing into the space in between.

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Support for this picture came from an analysis of earthquake waves rippling across the boundary between crustal and mantle rock.

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West of the proposed break, the bottom of the Indian Plate appears to be some 200 kilometers deep, suggesting it is still intact; to the east, where the slab splits in two, mantle rock is flowing in around a depth of 100 kilometers.

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Indeed, it appears the team is already sampling mantle rock that has never melted into magma, which then cools and crystallizes into different kinds of crustal rocks, says Vincent Salters, a geochemist at Florida State University.

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