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Ancient continental blocks soldered from below

A study of melting in the mantle under northern Canada more than one billion years ago shows that the oldest blocks of continent not only break apart but can also be repaired by the gluing action of major melting episodes.
  1. Stephen Foley

    1. Stephen Foley is in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia.

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  2. Craig O’Neill

    1. Craig O’Neill is in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia.

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Billions of years of plate tectonics have destroyed much of the evidence about the nature of the earliest continents. The parts of these continents that remain have survived because their composition makes them buoyant and strong, and they float like driftwood on the convecting mantle that has slowly churned beneath them many times over. These ancient continental blocks, known as cratons, were originally thought to be indefinitely stable owing to their strength and buoyancy. However, in the past few years, many studies have cast doubt on this viewpoint and emphasized the break-up and destruction of cratons. Writing in Nature, Liu et al.1 report that cratons not only break apart but can also be fused back together again.

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Nature 592, 692-693 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01087-8

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