Mantle (geology) might possibly be exposed in the South Pole-Aitken basin and/or the Crisium basin. The lunar mantle contains a seismic discontinuity at ~500 km depth, most likely related to a change in composition. Titan and Triton each have a mantle made of ice or other solid volatile substances. Some of the largest asteroids have mantles; for example, Vesta has a silicate mantle similar in composition to diogenite meteorites. Mantle (geology) The mantle is a layer inside a planetary body bounded below by a core and above by a crust. Mantles are made of rock or ices, and are generally the largest
Age of the Earth research. Most geological samples from Earth are unable to give a direct date of the formation of Earth from the solar nebula because Earth has undergone differentiation into the core, mantle, and crust, and this has then undergone a long history of mixing and unmixing of these sample reservoirs by plate tectonics, weathering and hydrothermal circulation. All of these processes may adversely affect isotopic dating mechanisms because the sample cannot always be assumed to have remained as a closed system, by which it is meant that either the parent or daughter nuclide (a species of atom characterised by the number