Columbia, also known as Nuna and Hudsonland, was one of Earth's ancient supercontinents. It was first proposed by Rogers & Santosh 2002 and is thought to have existed approximately 2,500 to 1,500 million years ago in the Paleoproterozoic Era. Zhao et al. 2002 proposed that the assembly of the supercontinent Columbia was completed by global-scale collisional events during 2.1–1.8 Ga.
Baltica is a paleocontinent that formed in the Paleoproterozoic and now constitutes northwestern Eurasia, or Europe north of the Trans-European Suture Zone and west of the Ural Mountains. The thick core of Baltica, the East European Craton, is more than three billion years old and formed part of the Rodinia supercontinent at c. 1 Ga.
The Pan-African orogeny was a series of major Neoproterozoic orogenic events which related to the formation of the supercontinents Gondwana and Pannotia about 600 million years ago. This orogeny is also known as the Pan-Gondwanan or Saldanian Orogeny. The Pan-African orogeny and the Grenville orogeny are the largest known systems of orogenies on Earth. The sum of the continental crust formed in the Pan-African orogeny and the Grenville orogeny makes the Neoproterozoic the period of Earth's history that has produced most continental crust.
The East European Craton (EEC) is the core of the Baltica proto-plate and consists of three crustal regions/segments: Fennoscandia to the northwest, Volgo-Uralia to the east, and Sarmatia to the south. Fennoscandia includes the Baltic Shield and has a diversified accretionary Archaean and early Proterozoic crust, while Sarmatia has an older Archaean crust. The Volgo-Uralia region has a thick sedimentary cover, however deep drillings have revealed mostly Archaean crust. There are two shields in the East European Craton: the Baltic/Fennoscandian shield and the Ukrainian shield. The Ukrainian Shield and the Voronezh Massif consists of 3.2-3.8 Ga Archaean crust in the southwest and east, and 2.3-2.1 Ga Early Proterozoic orogenic belts.
The Slave Craton is an Archaean craton in the north-western Canadian Shield, in Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The Slave Craton includes the 4.03 Ga-old Acasta Gneiss which is one of the oldest dated rocks on Earth. Covering about 300,000 km2 (120,000 sq mi), it is a relatively small but well-exposed craton dominated by ~2.73–2.63 Ga greenstones and turbidite sequences and ~2.72–2.58 Ga plutonic rocks, with large parts of the craton underlain by older gneiss and granitoid units. The Slave Craton is one of the blocks that compose the Precambrian core of North America, also known as the palaeocontinent Laurentia.
The Kaapvaal Craton, along with the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia, are the only remaining areas of pristine 3.6–2.5 Ga crust on Earth. Similarities of rock records from both these cratons, especially of the overlying late Archean sequences, suggest that they were once part of the Vaalbara supercontinent.
The Zimbabwe Craton is an area in Southern Africa of ancient continental crust, being a part of the ancient continent of Western Gondwana, with rocks dating back to the early Archean Eon, possibly as early as 3.46 billion years ago (Ga.). The craton is named after the country of Zimbabwe where the majority of the craton is. The rocks of the Zimbabwe Craton are separated from the rocks of the Kaapvaal Craton to the southeast by the 250 kilometres (160 mi) wide Limpopo Belt of granulite facies tectonites. The Limpopo belt formed contemporaneously with the Zimbabwe and Kaapvaal cratons, but remained geologically active until much later. It was only in the late Archean, ca. 2.8-2.5 Ga., that the two cratons were stabilized together and that high-grade metamorphism ceased in the Limpopo Belt. North of the Zimbabwe Craton is the Zambezi Belt.
In geology the Ukrainian Shield is the southwest shield of the East European craton. The Ukrainian Shield and the Voronezh Massif consist of 3.2-3.8 Ga Archaean crust in the southwest and east, and 2.3-2.1 Ga Early Proterozoic orogenic belts. The Ukrainian shield is approx. 1000 km long and up to 250 km wide.
The Limpopo Belt is located in South Africa and Zimbabwe, runs E-NE, and joins the Kaapvaal Craton to the south with the Zimbabwe Craton to the north. The belt is of high-grade metamorphic rocks that have undergone a long cycle of metamorphism and deformation that ended 2.0 billion years ago, after the stabilisation of the adjacent massifs. The belt comprises 3 components: the Central Zone, the North Marginal Zone and the South Marginal Zone.
The Kalahari Craton is a craton, an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, that occupies large portions of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. It consists of two cratons separated by the Limpopo Belt: the larger Kaapvaal Craton to the south and the smaller Zimbabwe Craton to the north. The Namaqua Belt is the southern margin of the Kaapvaal Craton.
The Wyoming Craton is a craton in the west-central United States and western Canada – more specifically, in Montana, Wyoming, southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, and parts of northern Utah. Also called the Wyoming Province, it is the initial core of the continental crust of North America.
The Lewisian complex or Lewisian gneiss is a suite of Precambrian metamorphic rocks that outcrop in the northwestern part of Scotland, forming part of the Hebridean Terrane and the North Atlantic Craton. These rocks are of Archaean and Paleoproterozoic age, ranging from 3.0–1.7 billion years (Ga). They form the basement on which the Torridonian and Moine Supergroup sediments were deposited. The Lewisian consists mainly of granitic gneisses with a minor amount of supracrustal rocks. Rocks of the Lewisian complex were caught up in the Caledonian orogeny, appearing in the hanging walls of many of the thrust faults formed during the late stages of this tectonic event.
The geology of Russia, the world's largest country, which extends over much of northern Eurasia, consists of several stable cratons and sedimentary platforms bounded by orogenic (mountain) belts.
Voronezh Massif is a tectonic anteclise in the south of the Central Russian Upland with a high occurrence of the Precambrian basement. It lies to the southwest of the town of Voronezh, Russia.
The Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen(ah-lah-coh-jin) (help·info) is a failed rift, or failed rift arm (aulacogen), of the triple junction that became the Iapetus Ocean spreading ridges. It is a significant geological feature in the Western and Southern United States. It formed sometime in the early to mid Cambrian Period and spans the Wichita Mountains, Taovayan Valley, Anadarko Basin, and Hardeman Basin in Southwestern Oklahoma. The Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen is primarily composed of basaltic dikes, gabbros, and units of granitic rock.
The Svecofennian orogeny is a series of related orogenies that resulted in the formation of much of the continental crust in what is today Sweden and Finland plus some minor parts of Russia. The orogenies lasted from about 2000 to 1800 million years ago during the Paleoproterozoic Era. The resulting orogen is known as the Svecofennian orogen or Svecofennides. To the west and southwest the Svecofennian orogen limits with the generally younger Transscandinavian Igneous Belt. It is assumed that the westernmost fringes of the Svecofennian orogen have been reworked by the Sveconorwegian orogeny just as the western parts of the Transscandinavian Igneous Belt has. The Svecofennian orogeny involved the accretion of numerous island arcs in such manner that the pre-existing craton grew with this new material from what is today northeast to the southwest. The accretion of the island arcs was also related to two other processes that occurred in the same period; the formation of magma that then cooled to form igneous rocks and the metamorphism of rocks.
Volgo–Uralia is a crustal segment that together with the Sarmatian Craton and the Fennoscandian Craton makes up the East European Craton. Volgo–Uralia is the easternmost of the three segments and borders the Sarmatian Craton to the southwest along the Pachelma aulacogen and the Fennoscandian Craton to the northwest along the Volhyn–Central Russian aulacogen.
The Dnieper-Donets Rift or Pripyat-Dnieper-Donets Rift is an east-west running rift in the Sarmatian Craton that developed and was most active in the Paleozoic. The rift extends from the Caspian Depression in Russia to northern Ukraine passing by the Donbas region. The rift separates the Voronizh Massif in the north from the Ukrainian Shield in south.
The Hearne Craton is a craton in northern Canada which, together with the Rae Craton, forms the Western Churchill Province. Hearne is one of the six Archaean cratons of the Canadian Shield that are bound together by Palaeoproterozoic orogenic belts. Before being merged these six cratons formed independent microcontinents.
