Slave craton

North America cratons and basement rock.

The Slave craton is a Canadian geological formation located in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. This craton is approximately 300,000 square kilometres (120,000 sq mi) in size and forms part of the Canadian Shield. It is dominated by ca. 2.73-2.63 Ga greenstones and turbidite sequences and ca. 2.72-2.58 Ga plutonic rock, with large parts of the craton underlain by older gneiss and granitoid units. The cratonic block extends from the Great Slave Lake at about 61 °N to Coronation Gulf on the Arctic Ocean at 69 °N. It covers longitudinally the area between about 105 °W to 117 °W. The Slave includes the Acasta Gneiss which is one of the oldest dated rock units on Earth at 4.03 Ga.

The crust of the Slave craton is thought to have amalgamated during a 2.69 Ga collision between a proto-Slave western basement complex, known as the Central Slave Basement Complex, and an eastern putative island arc terrane (Hackett River) along a N-S suture. Along the Acasta River, this basement complex yields protolith ages up to ca. 4.03 Ga.

Ages represented by the craton are the Cambrian, Cretaceous, Eocene, Jurassic, Permian and Siluro-Ordovician, based on the craton's known kimberlites which presently number in the hundreds.

See also

• Mackenzie Large Igneous Province
• Canadian Shield
• North American craton

References

• Bleeker, Wouter. (2006) ""Mineral Resources of Canada: A Synthesis of Major Deposit-types, District Metallogeny, the Evolution of Geological Provinces, and Exploration Methods." paper to be published jointly by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the Mineral Deposits Division (MDD) of the Geological Association of Canada. Current online verion: [1]
• Bleeker, Wouter, Bill davis, John Ketchum, Richard Stern, Keith Sircombe, and John Waldron. (2004) "The Slave Craton From On Top: The Crustal View." Geological Survey of Canada.[2]
• Bleeker, Wouter, Bill Davis, Herman gritter, and Alan G. Jones. (2004a) "The Slave Craton From Underneath: The Mantle View." Continental Geoscience Division, Geological Survey of Canada. [3]
• Bleeker, Wouter, K. Sircombe, and R. Stern. (2000) "Why the Slave Province, Northwest Territories, got a little bigger." Geological Survey of Canada Bookstore. Online: [4]
• Geologic map
• Bowring, S.A., and Williams, I.S., 1999. Priscoan (4.00-4.03 Ga) orthogneisses from northwestern Canada. Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, v. 134, 3-16.
• Breeman, Otto Van, Maurice Lambert, Jim Mortensen, and Mike Vileneuve. (2001) "Geochronology of the Black River Volcanic Complex, Nunavut-Northwest Territories." Geological Survey of Canada, Current Research 2001-F2:[5]
• Stern, R.A., Bleeker, W., 1998. Age of the world's oldest rocks refined using Canada's SHRIMP. the Acasta gneiss complex, Northwest Territories, Canada. Geoscience Canada, v. 25, p. 27-31