Importance
Because 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. If Earth were like the other silicate planets and lacked the duality of oceanic and continental crust, our planet would be a very different place and the evolution of Homo sapiens and civilization might have been impossible.
Read more about this topic: Continental Crust
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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