Definition of "crustal" [crust•al]

• Of or relating to a crust, especially that of the earth or the moon. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Another item of interest is that the magmas which feed the Hawaiian arc are pretty much exclusively basaltic, as would be expected from their deep-mantle origin, whereas the yellowstone magmas are of the granite/rhyolite/andesite (aka "crustal") varieties - which would appear anomalous - but at any rate, I wonder do they contain He and Ar in enriched amounts? report abuse"
• "They're "the payload" - if we need to drive a palentologist and a crustal geologist around Mars a bunch, they're NSSA astronauts, even if a NSDA astronaut pilots the lander/ascent vehicle and tags along to help carry rocks back to the rover."
• "Japan's largest earthquake on record may have knocked the planet 3.9 inches off its axis as one crustal plate slid beneath another, Eric Fielding, a principal scientist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Bloomberg news agency."