Crossword-Solution: CRUSTAL 7 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

Third, along the western side of each continent recent crustal movements supplemented by volcanic action on a magnificent scale have given rise to a complex series of younger mountains, the two great cordilleras.

This rock may be made by the consolidation of volcanic cinders, of angular waste at the foot of cliffs, or of fragments of coral torn by the waves from coral reefs, as well as of strata crushed by crustal movements.

Under the resistless pressure of crustal movements almost any rocks, sandstones, shales, lavas of all kinds, granites, diorites, and gabbros may be metamorphosed into schists by crushing and shearing.

Thus, even at the beginning of the Paleozoic, the continental plateau of North America had already been left by crustal movements in relief above the abysses of the great oceans on either side.

The Mesozoic peneplain has been upwarped by later crustal movements and has suffered profound erosion, but the remnants of it which remain on the upland of southern New England and the even summits of the Allegheny ridges suffice to prove that it once existed.