Earth's Layers No Labels – Blank Diagram to Print and Label

All 10 layers on the diagram

Show the list

Start here: 5 main layers 5

Crust The thin, brittle outer shell: only 1% of the Earth's volume. Drawn thicker than true here.
Upper mantle The top of the mantle, under the crust. The plates ride on a hot, yielding zone in it.
Lower mantle The deep mantle, down to the core. Made of iron and magnesium silicate minerals.
Outer core Liquid, mostly iron: earthquake S waves do not pass through it.
Inner core Solid, mostly iron, at the very centre of the Earth.

Crust and plates: 5 5

Continental crust The crust under the continents. Thicker than under the sea, deepest under mountains.
Oceanic crust The thin crust under the oceans, about 5 km thick at Hawaii.
Moho (Mohorovičić discontinuity) The boundary between the crust and the mantle. Earthquake waves suddenly speed up here.
Lithosphere The rigid outer layer: the crust plus the top of the mantle. It is broken into the plates.
Asthenosphere The hotter, weaker part of the upper mantle under the lithosphere.

How this list was compiled: Read 2026-09-26. (1) US Geological Survey, The Interior of the Earth (General Interest Publication), https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/interior/ : three main shells, crust, mantle and core, the mantle and core each in two parts; crust 1% of the volume, mantle 84%, core 15%; oceanic crust about 5 km at Hawaii, continental crust 25 to 60 km under eastern California; the Moho; plates of crust and part of the upper mantle moving over a hot, yielding zone 100 to 200 km down; a transition zone, then the lower mantle of iron and magnesium silicates; outer core liquid, inner core solid, mostly iron. (2) Wikipedia, Lithosphere, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithosphere : the lithosphere is the crust plus the uppermost, non-convecting mantle; the asthenosphere below it is the weaker, hotter, deeper part of the upper mantle. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site by script, 2026-09-26. Own work, nothing traced. Licence: own work

How it works

A blank layers of the Earth diagram to label by hand. A line runs out from each of ten layers with nothing written at its end: five on the whole Earth, five on the close-up where a continent meets the sea.

Read the full guide

Five names on the cut Earth

From the outside in: crust, upper mantle, lower mantle, outer core, inner core. A class that learns four layers can write mantle once, across both mantle rings.

Five names at the coast

Continental crust lies under the land and the mountain, oceanic crust under the sea. The line under both is the Moho. The bracket at the left marks the lithosphere, and the layer at the bottom is the asthenosphere. For a younger class, fold the sheet and hand out the top drawing alone.

The lithosphere is not one more layer under the crust: its bracket spans the crust and the rigid top of the mantle.

Questions and answers

How thick is the Earth's crust?

It varies. The US Geological Survey gives about 5 kilometers for the oceanic crust at Hawaii and 25 to 60 kilometers for the continental crust under eastern California. That is why the land side of the close-up is drawn deeper than the sea side.

What is the Moho on a diagram of Earth's layers?

The boundary between the crust and the mantle. Its full name, the Mohorovicic discontinuity, honors the Croatian scientist who discovered it. No one has seen it: it shows as a sharp rise in the speed of earthquake waves.

Is the unlabeled diagram drawn to scale?

Only the core. On the cut Earth the outer and inner core are to scale, and the crust and upper mantle are drawn thicker than true so they can be seen and labeled. The close-up at the coast is not to scale.

Does the layers of the Earth unlabeled diagram have an answer key?

Yes. It prints the two drawings again with a name at the end of every line. The Moho carries its full name in brackets.