Nature 378, 571 - 578 (07 December 1995); doi:10.1038/378571a0

Making continental crust

Roberta L. Rudnick

The continental crust has an andesitic bulk composition, which cannot have been produced by the basaltic magmatism that dominates sites of present-day crustal growth—at both convergent margins and within plates. These observations suggest that there may have been a different mode of continental crust generation in Archaean times, and may point to delamination of the lower crust as an important recycling process.

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