What is formed on top of continental crust?
Because the surface of continental crust mainly lies above sea level, its existence allowed land life to evolve from marine life. Its existence also provides broad expanses of shallow water known as epeiric seas and continental shelves where complex metazoan life could become established during early Paleozoic time, in what is now called the Cambrian explosion.
What is formed on top of the continental crust known as continental shelves?
ocean waters shelf seas sea shelf sea water
Continental crust
The pedosphere lies below the vegetative cover of the biosphere and above the hydrosphere and lithosphere. The soil forming process (pedogenesis) can begin without the aid of biology but is significantly quickened in the presence of biologic reactions. Soil formation begins with the chemical and/or physical breakdown of minerals to form the initial material that overlies the bedrock substrate. Biology quickens this by secreting acidic compounds (dominantly fulvic acids) that help break rock apart. Particular biologic pioneers are lichen, mosses and seed bearing plants, but many other inorganic reactions take place that diversify the chemical makeup of the early soil layer. Once weathering and decomposition products accumulate, a coherent soil body allows the migration of fluids both vertically and laterally through the soil profile, causing ion exchange between solid, fluid and gaseous phases. As time progresses, the bulk geochemistry of the soil layer will deviate away from the initial composition of the bedrock and will evolve to a chemistry that reflects the type of reactions that take place in the soil.
What is formed on top of continental crust and chemically reacts through the soil forming process?
pedosphere
Pedosphere
Continental crust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental%20crust
Pedosphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedosphere
Mantle (geology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle%20%28geology%29
Continental crust is the layer of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks that forms the geological continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to their shores, known as continental shelves.
Continental crust
Continental crust is the layer of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks that forms the geological continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to their shores, known as continental shelves. Because the surface of continental crust mainly lies above sea level, its existence allowed land life to evolve from marine life. The pedosphere is formed on top of the continental crust and chemically reacts through the soil forming process.