The oceanic earth's crust has mainly grown from magmatic productivity in spreading meridional ridges during the past 100–200 million years. The specific rock formed from these magmas is the ocean ridge tholeiitic basalt (ORT). From both melting experiments on peridotites and relative abundances of incompatible elements (La, Ce, Th, Rb etc.) the tholeiitic magmas can be explained as products of about 15% partial melting of abundant upper mantle rocks. A mobilization of incompatible elements very late in the mantle history has formed the different source rocks for magmas and ORT basalts depleted or slightly enriched in incompatible elements.