Crust (geology) the crust. The boundary between the crust and mantle is conventionally placed at the Mohorovičić discontinuity, a boundary defined by a contrast in seismic velocity. The crust of the Earth is of two distinctive types: Because both continental and oceanic crust are less dense than the mantle below, both types of crust "float" on the mantle. This is isostasy, and it's also one of the reasons continental crust is higher than oceanic: continental is less dense and so "floats" higher. As a result, water pools in above the oceanic crust, forming the oceans. The temperature of the crust increases with
Geology of the Iberian Peninsula in the study of geology in Spain. In 1972 the MAGNA plan was created to produce 1:50000 scale maps of Spain (this work began in Portugal in 1952). Between 1986 and 1987 a Spanish-French collaboration called ECORS-Pirineos made a seismic vertical reflection profile 250 km long through the Pyrenees. By 2000 there were six seismic profiles through the Pyrenees which provided a wealth of information of the thickness of the crust and the internal structure of the orogen. Between 1852 and 1857, Carlos Ribeiro made a geological map at 1:480 000 scale of the Portuguese region between the Douro and