The Moon also underwent extensive and complex chemical separations very early in its history, and those separations produced a mantle and a crust, but little or no metallic core. There are no lunar lithospheric plates and probably never were any. The youngest lunar lavas sampled are more than 3 billion years old. The Moon has no water, and thus no chemical erosion or chemical sediments. Its continents consist mainly of a single mineral, plagioclase feldspar.
Rock types are far fewer than on Earth.
It has the largest volcanoes known, and erosion channels that are now dry. The spectral peaks of major igneous minerals are wide. They overlap in the spectra of mineral mixtures. Each mineral phase has its characteristic infrared spectrum. The spectral peaks of major igneous minerals are broad.