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Cratons of South America and Africa during the Triassic Period when the two continents were joined as part of the Pangea supercontinent. A craton (/ ˈ k r eɪ t ɒ n / KRAYT-on, / ˈ k r æ t ɒ n / KRAT-on, or / ˈ k r eɪ t ən / KRAY-tən; [1] [2] [3] from Ancient Greek: κράτος kratos "strength") is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, which consists of Earth's two ...
Approximate location of Mesoproterozoic (older than 1.3 Ga) cratons within South America–Africa in their Gondwana configuration (c. 550-130 Ma).. The Congo Craton, covered by the Palaeozoic-to-recent Congo Basin, is an ancient Precambrian craton that with four others (the Kaapvaal, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and West African cratons) makes up the modern continent of Africa.
A craton is an ancient part of the Earth's continental crust which has been more or less stable since Precambrian times. Cratons whose ancient rocks are widely exposed at the surface, often with relatively subdued relief, are known as shields.
The West African Craton (WAC) is one of the five cratons of the Precambrian basement rock of Africa that make up the African Plate, the others being the Kalahari craton, Congo craton, Saharan Metacraton and Tanzania Craton. [1]
The degree of certainty to which the identified landmasses can be regarded as independent entities reduces as geologists look further back in time. The list includes cratons, supercratons, microcontinents, continents and supercontinents. For the Archean to Paleoproterozoic cores of most of the continents see also list of shields and cratons.
The Precambrian basement of Wyoming consists mainly of three major geologic terranes, the Archean Wyoming Craton or Province, the Paleoproterozoic Trans-Hudson orogen, and the Paleoproterozoic Colorado orogeny. The Colorado orogen collided with the Wyoming Craton at 1.78–1.75 Ga. Collision of the Colorado orogen and the Trans-Hudson orogen ...
The most important part of the Pilbara Craton to understand the early Earth crust is called the Eastern Pilbara Craton, where still exposed today, are crustal rocks that are up to 3.8 billion years old and intrusive granitic domes along with greenstone belts that are about 3.5 to 3.2 billion years old. [1]
The Precambrian tectonics of the North China Craton is complicated. Different scholars have proposed different models to explain the tectonics of the Craton, with two dominant schools of thought coming from Kusky (2003, [13] 2007, [1] 2010 [12]) and Zhao (2000, [14] [9] 2005, [2] and 2012 [5]). The major difference in their models is the ...