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The palaeomagnetically viable, long-lived and all-inclusive Rodinia supercontinent reconstruction

Department of Geology & Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, USA (e-mail: dai.evans{at}yale.edu)

	Abstract

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
Palaeomagnetic apparent polar wander (APW) paths from the world's cratons at 1300–700 Ma can constrain the palaeogeographic possibilities for a long-lived and all-inclusive Rodinia supercontinent. Laurentia's APW path is the most complete and forms the basis for superposition by other cratons' APW paths to identify possible durations of those cratons' inclusion in Rodinia, and also to generate reconstructions that are constrained both in latitude and longitude relative to Laurentia. Baltica reconstructs adjacent to the SE margin of Greenland, in a standard and geographically ‘upright’ position, between c. 1050 and 600 Ma. Australia reconstructs adjacent to the pre-Caspian margin of Baltica, geographically ‘inverted’ such that cratonic portions of Queensland are juxtaposed with that margin via collision at c. 1100 Ma. Arctic North America reconstructs opposite to the CONgo+São Francisco craton at its DAmaride–Lufilian margin (the ‘ANACONDA’ fit) throughout the interval 1235–755 Ma according to palaeomagnetic poles of those ages from both cratons, and the reconstruction was probably established during the c. 1600–1500 Ma collision. Kalahari lies adjacent to Mawsonland following collision at c. 1200 Ma; the Albany–Fraser orogen continues along-strike to the Sinclair-Kwando-Choma-Kaloma belt of south-central Africa. India, South China and Tarim are in proximity to Western Australia as previously proposed; some of these connections are as old as Palaeoproterozoic whereas others were established at c. 1000 Ma. Siberia contains a succession of mainly sedimentary-derived palaeomagnetic poles with poor age constraints; superposition with the Keweenawan track of the Laurentian APW path produces a position adjacent to western India that could have persisted from Palaeoproterozoic time, along with North China according to its even more poorly dated palaeomagnetic poles. The Amazonia, West Africa and Rio de la Plata cratons are not well constrained by palaeomagnetic data, but they are placed in proximity to western Laurentia. Rift successions of c. 700 Ma in the North American COrdillera and BRAsiliano-Pharuside orogens indicate breakup of these ‘COBRA’ connections that existed for more than one billion years, following Palaeoproterozoic accretionary assembly. The late Neoproterozoic transition from Rodinia to Gondwanaland involved rifting events that are recorded on many cratons through the interval c. 800–700 Ma and collisions from c. 650–500 Ma. The pattern of supercontinental transition involved large-scale dextral motion by West Africa and Amazonia, and sinistral motion plus rotation by Kalahari, Australia, India and South China, in a combination of introverted and extroverted styles of motion. The Rodinia model presented here is a marked departure from standard models, which have accommodated recent discordant palaeomagnetic data either by excluding cratons from Rodinia altogether, or by decreasing duration of the supercontinental assembly. I propose that the revised model herein is the only possible long-lived solution to an all-encompassing Rodinia that viably accords with existing palaeomagnetic data.

	Motivation

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

Most reconstructions of the early Neoproterozoic supercontinent Rodinia (Fig. 1), involving connections between western North America and Australia+Antarctica (Moores 1991; Karlstrom et al. 1999; Burrett & Berry 2000; Wingate et al. 2002) and eastern North America adjacent to Amazonia (Dalziel 1991; Hoffman 1991; Sadowski & Bettencourt 1996), have in the former case been negated or superseded by subsequent geochronological and palaeomagnetic results (Pisarevsky et al. 2003a, b), and in the latter instance suffered from minimal palaeomagnetic support (Tohver et al. 2002, 2006). Configurations that directly adjoin Laurentia and Siberia (e.g. Rainbird et al. 1998; Sears & Price 2003) are incompatible with recent palaeomagnetic data (reviewed by Pisarevsky & Natapov 2003), as are reconstructions that directly juxtapose Laurentia and Kalahari (Hanson et al. 2004). Kalahari and the composite Congo+São Francisco craton have been suggested to be excluded from Rodinia altogether (Kröner & Cordani 2003; Cordani et al. 2003).

View larger version (88K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 1. (a) Base maps for Rodinian cratons, reconstructed to their relative early Jurassic Pangaea configuration in present South American co-ordinates. Gondwanaland fragments are reconstructed according to McElhinny et al. (2003); these and other Euler parameters are listed in Table 1. North and South China, although distinct cratons in Rodinia, are united in this Early Jurassic configuration as indicated by Yang & Besse (2001). Late Mesoproterozoic (‘Grenvillian’) orogens are shaded grey. Truncated Mercator projection. Panels (b–d) show previous Rodinia models in the present North American (i.e. Laurentian) reference frame. References are Dalziel (1997), Pisarevsky et al. (2003a) and Li et al. (2008).

	Methods

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
Many Rodinia reconstructions have been based primarily on comparisons of the geological records among Meso–Neoproterozoic cratons. For this time interval, we can identify 13 large cratons (Fig. 1), plus many smaller terranes (e.g. Kolyma, Barentsia, Oaxaquia, Yemen). With only a dozen or so large pieces and an abundant well-preserved Meso-Neoproterozoic rock record, the Rodinia puzzle is tantalizingly solvable. Most of the geological comparisons are purely of regional extent, considering only two or three cratons (examples cited above), generally within the context of Hoffman's (1991) global model. In these geologically-based juxtapositions, palaeomagnetic data have been used in a subsidiary capacity, or ignored altogether, despite the fact that palaeomagnetism is currently the only strictly quantitative method available for reconstructing Rodinia and earlier supercontinents.

Although in a global sense Rodinia assembled in the late Mesoproterozoic and fragmented in the mid-Neoproterozoic (Hoffman 1991; Dalziel 1997; Condie 2002), thereby existing through the interval 1000–800 Ma, there are numerous indications of locally earlier assembly or later breakup. For example, only one side of Laurentia was deformed by orogeny in the late Mesoproterozoic: the Grenvillian (= proto-Appalachian) margin, and this belt did not evolve to a rifted passive margin until after 600 Ma (Cawood et al. 2001). Northern Laurentia experienced the c. 1600 Ma Forward Orogeny (Maclean & Cook 2004) followed by extensional events with associated large igneous provinces at 1270 Ma (LeCheminant & Heaman 1989) and 720 Ma (Heaman et al. 1992). The western margin assembled in the Palaeoproterozoic (Karlstrom et al. 2001; Ross 2002) and did not rift until the middle or latest Neoproterozoic (Link et al. 1993; Colpron et al. 2002). Rifting of Rodinia along these northern and western Laurentian margins, then, split the proto-Laurentian continent through terrains that had been joined for about a billion years. In these instances, if we can find the correct Rodinia juxtapositions, we have also solved part of the configuration of Nuna, which is Rodinia's Palaeoproterozoic supercontinental predecessor (Hoffman 1996). Many other examples of this type exist around the world, essentially wherever a Neoproterozoic rifted margin does not coincide with a ‘Grenvillian’ orogen (Fig. 1). When we test Rodinia models with palaeomagnetic data, therefore, we must in some cases consider results from rocks as old as c. 1800 Ma (e.g. Idnurm & Giddings 1995).

Axisymmetry of the Earth's time-averaged geomagnetic field implies that when individual palaeomagnetic poles from two continents are compared, their relative palaeolongitude remains unconstrained. This shortcoming to palaeomagnetically-based palaeogeographic reconstructions has led to illustrations of Rodinia and older supercontinents that show only a set of latitude-constrained options, further unconstrained by the unknown geomagnetic polarity states of the compared palaeomagnetic data, a degree of freedom for nearly every Precambrian reconstruction (Hanson et al. 2004). Among these degrees of freedom in palaeolongitude and hemispheric ambiguity, two or more cratons are juxtaposed in several allowable positions of direct contact for the specific age of pole comparison. If a similar reconstruction emerges from several adjacent time slices, then a long-lived direct connection between the cratons can be considered viable. Examples of this method, called the ‘closest approach’ technique, are found in Buchan et al. (2000, 2001), Meert & Stuckey (2002) and Pesonen et al. (2003).

A more powerful method of reconstructing ancient supercontinents relies on the coherent motion of all component cratons as part of that supercontinent, for the duration of their conjunction within a single lithospheric plate. Throughout the time interval when constituent cratons are assembled into a supercontinent, and if that assemblage is in motion relative to the Earth's magnetic field reference frame (due to plate tectonics or true polar wander, or both), then all elements of the landmass will share the same palaeomagnetic APW path. After the supercontinent disaggregates, the APW paths diverge (Powell et al. 1993), but their older segments carry a record of the earlier supercontinental motion. As we approach the problem from the present, we see that each craton's APW path contains segments alternating between times of individual plate motion and membership in successive supercontinents. When the cratons are reconstructed to their correct positions in a supercontinent, the APW paths superimpose atop one another (Evans & Pisarevsky 2008). Examples of this type of analysis are found in Weil et al. (1998) and Piper (2000), although both of those studies preceded important new palaeomagnetic data that disallow some of their cratonic juxtapositions. The modified Palaeopangaea reconstruction of Piper (2007) achieves broad-brush palaeomagnetic APW concordance among several cratons, merely as a result of pole averaging (e.g. Siberia), misquoted ages (e.g. Bangemall sills of Australia), or rotation parameters yielding somewhat acceptable pole matches but differing dramatically from the simple cartoon depiction of the reconstruction (e.g. Amazonia, São Francisco+Plata, West Africa and Tanzania+Kalahari) or even producing unacceptable geometric overlaps (northern Australia directly atop Kalahari, and portions of North China directly atop eastern India, in the ‘primitive’ or pre-1100 Ma reconstruction).

As discussed below, Laurentia has the most complete palaeomagnetic APW path for the interval of c. 1300–750 Ma that is most relevant for testing Rodinia reconstructions. In this paper I use the most reliable palaeomagnetic poles from non-Laurentian cratons to compare with the Laurentian reference APW path and thereby to constrain the possible configurations of a long-lived Rodinia. A quantitatively viable Rodinia may be found by investigating possible APW superpositions and determining whether the resulting juxtapositions are geologically reasonable for the time intervals under consideration. This method requires equal APW track lengths between coeval poles on any two given cratons; thus it is conceivable that no APW comparisons will be possible between those blocks and that they must have been in relative motion throughout the interval under consideration. Likewise, there is no guarantee that direct juxtapositions of cratons will emerge: some pole comparisons may result in substantial or complete geographic overlap between two or more cratons, which are unallowable, and others may indicate wide separations between blocks, requiring the presence of intervening blocks (or occurrence of rapid true polar wander; see Evans (2003) to legitimize the initial hypothesis of common APW.

Accurate Neoproterozoic craton outlines are important not only for correct geometric fits in Rodinia reconstructions, but they also indicate whether certain palaeomagnetic results from marginal foldbelts apply to a craton or to its allochthonous terranes. Cratonic outlines, drawn in accordance with a broad range of tectonic and stratigraphic studies that are too numerous to cite here, are generally chosen to lie within craton-marginal orogens at the most distal extent of recognizable stratigraphic connections to each adjacent block. Cratons that have split into fragments during the breakup of Pangaea (e.g. Laurentia+Greenland+Rockall, or Kalahari+Falkland+Grunehogna+Ellsworth) must first be reassembled according to seafloor-spreading data combined with geological ‘piercing points.’ Post-Pangaean fragments are restored to each other according to standard reconstructions (Table 1), with the exception of Kalahari: following restoration of the Falkland Islands (Grunow et al. 1991), Grunehogna is reconstructed to align the Natal and Maud orogenic fronts in the manner suggested by Jacobs & Thomas (2004), and the Ellsworth+Haag province is then rotated to fit into the Natal embayment. The Siberian craton shows restoration of a 25° internal rotation between its northwestern and southeastern (Aldan) portions, associated with development of the Devonian Vilyuy aulacogen, to resolve discrepancies in older palaeomagnetic data (Smethurst et al. 1998; Gallet et al. 2000). Craton boundaries in Antarctica are particularly uncertain, and the present analysis uses conservative estimates of minimal areas attached to each block. Smaller blocks with limited to no palaeomagnetic data, such as Precordillera–Cuyania, Oaxaquia, Barentsia, Azania and various poorly exposed blocks in South America (Dalziel 1997; Collins & Pisarevsky 2005; Fuck et al. 2008), are not described in detail but are mentioned below where appropriate. Cratons and palaeomagnetic poles are rotated to geometric accuracy via the software created by Cogné (2003). All calculations assume a geocentric axial-dipolar magnetic field, recently verified for the Proterozoic using a compilation of evaporite palaeolatitudes that gave subtropical values as expected (Evans 2006) and a planetary sphere of constant radius.

	Laurentia

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

View larger version (34K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 2. Apparent polar wander path for Laurentia between 1270 and 720 Ma (poles listed in Table 2), which is used as a reference curve for superimposing ‘key’ poles from other cratons during the Rodinian interval (Buchan et al. 2001). Note the large age gap between 1015 and 780 Ma, which is hypothesized here to include a large APW loop at 800 Ma as observed from other cratons (see text and Figs 8 & 10) and from recent high-quality data from Svalbard (Maloof et al. 2006).

	Baltica

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
The least controversial component of the revised Rodinia reconstruction proposed herein is the placement of Baltica adjacent to eastern Laurentia, as has been suggested with minor variations throughout the last three decades (Patchett et al. 1978; Piper 1980; Bond et al. 1984; Gower et al. 1990; Hoffman 1991; Dalziel 1997; Weil et al. 1998; Hartz & Torsvik 2002; Pisarevsky et al. 2003a; Cawood & Pisarevsky 2006). The principal variations among these reconstructions are the latitude of juxtaposition along the Greenland margin and the orientation of Balitca such that various margins (e.g. Caledonide, Timanian, Uralian) are proposed to participate in the direct conjunction with Greenland (Buchan et al. 2000; Cawood & Pisarevsky 2006). The reconstruction favoured here is nearly identical to that proposed by Pisarevsky et al. (2003a), but with a tighter fit. Pisarevsky et al. (2003a) opted for a several hundred-kilometre gap between the present-day margins of SE Greenland and the Norwegian Caledonides, in order to account for palinspastic restoration of Caledonide shortening. These same margins, however, experienced a counteracting amount of extension during Cenozoic initiation of Atlantic Ocean opening as well as Eocambrian opening of Iapetus; the three post-Rodinian alterations to the Greenland and Baltic margins may well have nullified one another, so a tight fit is preferred here (Fig. 3).

View larger version (26K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 3. Palaeomagnetic poles from Baltica (grey), compared with the Laurentian reference APW path. As with Figures 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, dark-grey shaded cratonic areas are late Mesoproterozoic (‘Grenvillian’) orogens. (a) Poles with their 95% confidence ellipses and ages in Ma, as listed in Table 2, plus Evans & Pisarevsky (2008) for the 1780–1270 Ma data. (b) Superposition of the 1780–1270 Ma poles with the pre-Rodinian APW path from Laurentia, rotating Baltica and its poles by (47.5°N, 001.5°E, +49°CCW) after Evans & Pisarevsky (2008). This pre-Rodinia configuration is essentially the same as ‘NENA’ by Gower et al. (1990). (c) Rodinian reconstruction (1070–615 Ma) that superimposes the Sveconorwegian APW loop atop the Grenville APW loop of Laurentia (despite recently recognized age mismatches), using the Euler rotation parameters given in Table 3.

The proposed reconstruction of Baltica adjacent to SE Greenland at c. 1100–600 Ma, like that of Pisarevsky et al. (2003a), brings the Sveconorwegian orogen in southern Scandinavia close to the Grenville orogen in Labrador with minor right-stepping offset (Gower et al. 2008). It also unites the loci of precisely coeval 615 Ma Long Range dykes in Labrador (Kamo et al. 1989; Kamo & Gower 1994) and Egersund dykes in southernmost Norway (Bingen et al. 1998). Palaeomagnetic results from both of these dyke swarms have yielded scattered results spanning a wide range of inclinations, rendering palaeolatitude comparisons difficult (Murthy et al. 1992; Walderhaug et al. 2007); however, they are as consistent with the reconstruction introduced here as they are for that of Pisarevsky et al. (2003a) and Li et al. (2008), and this general class of reconstructions is superior to all other proposed Rodinian juxtapositions of Laurentia and Baltica (Cawood & Pisarevsky 2006).

Palaeomagnetic poles from Baltica and Laurentia during the preceding interval c. 1750–1270 Ma are incompatible with the preferred c. 1100–600 Ma reconstruction, and suggest instead a modified fit with Baltica's Kola–Timanian margin adjacent to East Greenland (Fig. 3). This fit is essentially the geologically-based Northern Europe+North America (NENA) reconstruction of Gower et al. (1990), confirmed palaeomagnetically by Buchan et al. (2000) and Evans & Pisarevsky (2008) for the pre-Rodinian interval. Relative to Laurentia, Baltica rotated clockwise c. 70° about an Euler pole near Scoresby Sund, some time between 1270 and 1050 Ma, in approximately the same sense as was first proposed by Patchett et al. (1978) and Piper (1980). New palaeomagnetic results from the 1122 Ma Salla Dyke in northern Finland are more compatible with a pre-rotation reconstruction than a post-rotation reconstruction, suggesting that the rotation occurred after, or even coincident with, dyke emplacement at c. 1120 Ma (Salminen et al. 2009). The proposed rotation is consistent with the broad-scale tectonic asymmetry of Baltica (orogeny in west, rifting in east) through the Mesoproterozoic interval (Bogdanova et al. 2008). Below it will be shown how this rotation created a broad gulf along the edge of the Rodinia-encircling ocean, Mirovia (McMenamin & McMenamin 1990), which became an isolated sea following further Rodinian amalgamation.

	Australia+Mawsonland

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
The semi-contiguous Albany–Fraser and Musgrave belts are commonly considered as part of a late Mesoproterozoic suture zone among three constituent Australian cratons (western, northern and southern; Myers et al. 1996), or between a previously united western+northern craton (Li 2000) and the southern, ‘Mawson Continent’ (Cawood & Korsch 2008). The latter entity extends from the Australian Gawler craton s.s. into Terre Adélie in Antarctica, and possibly as far south as the Transantarctic Mountains near the Miller Range (Goodge et al. 2001; Fitzsimons 2003; Payne et al. 2009). Here the term ‘Mawsonland’ is formally introduced as a more succinct synonym to ‘Mawson Continent.’ The Albany–Fraser belt is truncated on its western end by the late Neoproterozoic Pinjarra orogen (Fitzsimons 2003) and on its eastern end by the Palaeozoic Lachlan–Thompson accretionary orogen (Li & Powell 2001), although some local vestiges of Mesoproterozoic orogeny or magmatism are documented in northern Queensland (Blewett & Black 1998) and around Tasmania (Berry et al. 2005; Fioretti et al. 2005). These truncations can provide important piercing points for Rodinia reconstructions, because the Albany–Fraser–Musgrave orogen contains, along its entire length, two episodes of tectonomagmatic activity dated at c. 1320 and c. 1200–1150 Ma (White et al. 1999; Clark et al. 2000). Early consolidation of the Australia+Mawsonland continent allows it to be considered as a single entity in post-1200 Ma Rodinia reconstructions.

Two important (‘key’) palaeomagnetic poles are available for the c. 1100–750 Ma Rodinian interval: the Bangemall basin sills at 1070 Ma (Wingate et al. 2002), and the Mundine Well Dykes at 755 Ma (Wingate & Giddings 2000). The latter result is supplemented by a pole from oriented borehole core of the Browne Formation (estimated age c. 830–800 Ma), which is the only result among several reported by Pisarevsky et al. (2007) with adequate statistics on the mean direction. Other palaeomagnetic poles from Australia during the Meso–Neoproterozoic interval are problematic, as discussed by Wingate & Evans (2003): they suffer from any combination of poor geochronology, lack of tilt control, and unknown timing of the magnetic remanence acquisition. Similarly, a more recent result from the Alcurra dykes in the Musgrave belt (Schmidt et al. 2006) also suffer from lack of tectonic control, either relative to the palaeohorizontal or in the sense of vertical-axis rotation of the Musgrave region. The principal conclusion of the latter study, that Australia did not assemble until after 1070 Ma, should be treated with caution until further palaeomagnetic studies of Australia's constituent cratons are undertaken.

The great-circle angular distance between the two key poles (32.5°) is identical within error of the angular distance between the two age-correlative interpolated positions on the Laurentian APW path, and this permits the working hypothesis that both cratons could have been part of a single Rodinia plate throughout the intervening time interval. Under this assumption, these two poles can be superimposed on the Laurentian APW path in two options, depending on choice of geomagnetic polarity (Fig. 4). One option points the Albany-Fraser orogen directly into the centre of the northern margin of Laurentia (Fig. 4a), which appears incompatible with the lack of an equivalently aged orogen. Although Hoffman (1991) depicted the Racklan orogeny in that region as a Mesoproterozoic event, subsequent work indicates a Palaeoproterozoic age for that and related events (Thorkelson et al. 2001; Maclean & Cook 2004). There is a poorly understood post-Racklan orogenic event in Yukon (Corn Creek orogeny; Thorkelson et al. 2005), but its precise timing and regional extent are unknown. Similarly, although Hoffman (1991) and Dalziel (1997) extended the Grenville orogen northward along the margin of East Greenland, more recent work in that area – plus the once-contiguous eastern Svalbard – dates the ‘Grenvillian’ tectonomagmatic activity at c. 950 Ma (Watt & Thrane 2001; Johansson et al. 2005), far younger than the Albany-Fraser belt and negating that potential piercing point. The reconstruction of Australia relative to Laurentia as shown in Figure 4a is also incompatible with the only viable option for the Congo+São Francisco craton, as will be shown below.

View larger version (48K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 4. Superposition of ‘key’ poles from Australia, at 1070 and 755 Ma (Table 2), and the Laurentian APW path (in the North American reference frame) according to one polarity option (a) that produces pronounced geologic mismatches between Western Australia and northern Canada, and the alternative, allowable polarity option (b) indicating the preferred position adjacent to the Uralian margin of Baltica. Euler parameters for the rotation of Australia and its poles to Laurentia are (–21.8°N, 318.4°E, +155.3°CCW) in panel (A), and (–12.5°N, 064.0°E, +134.5°CCW) in panel (B).

	Congo+São Francisco

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
Sharing many tectonic similarities since the Archaean–Palaeoproterozoic, the Congo craton in central Africa and the São Francisco craton in eastern Brazil are almost universally considered to represent a single tectonic entity in Rodinian times (e.g. Brito Neves et al. 1999; Alkmim et al. 2001). The Congo craton itself is transected by a Mesoproterozoic orogen, the Kibaran belt, which divides the poorly-known western two-thirds of the craton that is largely covered by the Phanerozoic Congo basin (Daly et al. 1992) from the relatively well-exposed Tanzania and Bangweulu massifs (and bounding Palaeoproterozoic belts) in the east (De Waele et al. 2008). The Kibaran belt has been viewed as either an ensialic orogen (e.g. Klerkx et al. 1987) or a subduction-accretionary margin followed by c. 1080 Ma continental collision (e.g. Kokonyangi et al. 2006). At the southeastern extremity of the craton, the Irumide belt records c. 1100–1000 Ma deformation and magmatism (Johnson et al. 2005; De Waele et al. 2008).

Reliable palaeomagnetic data from the aggregate Congo+São Francisco craton are sparse. In this paper, two poles from Congo are used as the key tie points to the Laurentian master APW curve: the post-Kibaran (e.g. Kabanga–Musongati) layered mafic–ultramafic intrusions (Meert et al. 1994) and the Mbozi gabbro (Meert et al. 1995). The former pole is constrained by Ar/Ar dating at c. 1235 Ma, despite crystallization ages of the complexes as early as c. 1400–1350 Ma (Maier et al. 2007). The intrusions lie along the boundary between para-autochtonous Tanzania craton to the east, and an orogenic internal zone to the west (Tack et al. 1994). Using the Kabanga–Musongati pole to represent the entire Congo craton requires that the subsequent c. 1080 Ma deformation was ensialic rather than collisional. Despite the fact that the palaeomagnetically studied Mbozi gabbro is not directly dated, the later-stage syenites in the complex are now constrained by a 748±6 Ma zircon U–Pb age (Mbede et al. 2004), and this may serve as an approximation of the age of palaeomagnetic remanence. In addition to these poles, the 795±7 Ma (Ar/Ar; Deblond et al. 2001) Gagwe–Kabuye lavas have yielded a result that appears reliable yet is widely separated from the slightly younger Mbozi pole (Meert et al. 1995). Two groups of poles from dykes in Bahia, Brazil (D'Agrella-Filho et al. 2004) are also included in the aggregate Congo+São Francisco APW path. These groups of poles, with Ar/Ar ages of c. 1080 and 1020 Ma, suggest high-latitude positions for the Congo+São Francisco craton that appeared to negate any direct long-lived Rodinian connections with Laurentia (Weil et al. 1998; Pisarevsky et al. 2003a; Cordani et al. 2003), although collision between the two blocks at c. 1000 Ma was considered possible (D'Agrella-Filho et al. 1998). As discussed below, these poles are of crucial importance for testing the radical Rodinia revisions proposed in this paper.

Given the 1235 Ma Kabanga–Musongati and c. 750 Ma Mbozi poles superimposed atop the coeval Sudbury dykes and c. 750 Ma poles from Laurentia (Table 2), the two polarity options for this long-lived reconstruction of the two blocks are shown in Figure 5. In the first option (Fig. 5a), there is substantial overlap between the two cratons that cannot be avoided by minor adjustments to the rotations within the uncertainty limits of the poles. This implies that the reconstruction, although palaeomagnetically accurate, is not geologically possible. Other Congo+São Francisco poles are also shown in Figure 5a, to illustrate that they too fall off the Laurentian APW path in the reconstruction of this first polarity option.

View larger version (47K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 5. Non-‘key’ palaeomagnetic poles from Congo+São Francisco during the interval c. 1370–750 Ma (Table 2). The 1235 and 755 Ma poles from Congo are used to generate two possible superpositions onto the Laurentian APW path (in the North American reference frame). One polarity option (a) generates a complete overlap between the two cratons and is thus not allowed, whereas the other (b) produces the ‘ANACONDA’ juxtaposition described in the text. Note that the Bahia dykes poles fall on the c. 1100 Ma segment of the Laurentian path, and a testable prediction of ANACONDA is that the existing Ar/Ar ages of 1080–1010 Ma from these dikes are too young (see text). Euler parameters for the rotation of Congo+São Francisco and its poles from the present African reference frame to Laurentia are (20.0°N, 334.9°E, +162.5°CCW) in panel (A), and (–24.0°N, 249.0°E, +128.5°CCW) in panel (B).

The ANACONDA reconstruction juxtaposes several intriguingly similar geological features among the São Francisco, Congo and northern Laurentian cratons. Extensive Palaeoproterozoic–Mesoproterozoic orogeny in the southern Angola–Congo craton (Seth et al. 2003) adjoins crust with a similarly aged interval of deformation in arctic Canada (Thorkelson et al. 2001; MacLean & Cook 2004) and suggests initial amalgamation of ANACONDA at c. 1.6–1.5 Ga. Post-collisional igneous activity at c. 1.38 Ga is recorded by the Kunene complex and coeval Hart River magmatism in Canada (Thorkelson et al. 2001) and Midsommersø dolerite and cogenetic Zig-Zag Dal basalt (Upton et al. 2005). Along the southeastern margin of Congo, potassic magmatism at 1360–1330 Ma (Vrana et al. 2004) correlates broadly in age with the c. 1350 Ma Mashak volcanics in the southern Urals (Maslov et al. 1997).

The ANACONDA reconstruction also identifies potential long-sought counterparts to the giant 1.27 Ga Mackenzie/Muskox/Coppermine large igneous province in Canada, with correlatives in Greenland and Baltica (Ernst & Buchan 2002). In eastern Africa, the late-Kibaran intrusive complexes described above were once thought to be of the same age (Tack et al. 1994), but are now known to be either older (Tohver et al. 2006) or younger (De Waele et al. 2008). Nonetheless, a dyke of similar tectonic setting in Burundi is dated by Ar/Ar at c. 1280–1250 Ma (Deblond et al. 2001), and Tohver et al. (2006) raise the possibility that the c. 1380 Ma zircons in the layered intrusions are xenocrysts. Thus, more comprehensive geochronology of this region is warranted. In Brazil, the Niquelândia and related mafic-ultramafic complexes have numerous age constraints, the most recent study suggests emplacement ages at 1250±20 Ma (Pimentel et al. 2004). The latter intrusions lie within the late Neoproterozoic Brasilia belt, adjacent to the São Francisco craton, and in the present model are considered not grossly allochthonous relative to that craton (Pimentel et al. 2006). Concordance of the Laurentian and Congo+São Francisco APW paths younger than this age indicates that extension at 1270–1250 Ma failed to separate the cratons, rather than opening a postulated ‘Poseidon’ ocean (Jackson & Iannelli 1981).

These magmatic loci could represent early stages of the rifting that is required by palaeomagnetic data to have rotated Baltica away from Congo and toward southern Greenland in the late Mesoproterozoic, as discussed above. Baltica's rotation, coupled with arrival of Australia at c. 1100 Ma as discussed above, isolated a craton-sized tract of remnant ocean at the end of the Mesoproterozoic. This ‘hole’, in the present revised Rodinia model, is intriguing for several reasons. First, it predicts a Mediterranean-style slab rollback to account for arc magmatism and arc-continent collision in the Irumide belt at c. 1050–1020 Ma (De Waele et al. 2008) as well as c. 1000–800 Ma tectonic events in Greenland (Watt & Thrane 2001) and northern Norway (Kirkland et al. 2006). Second, the large c. 800 Ma evaporite basin hosting the Shaba–Katanga copperbelt in southern Congo (Jackson et al. 2003) may have continued onto Laurentia as the evaporitic upper part of the Amundsen basin and its correlative units in the Mackenzie Mountains (Rainbird et al. 1996). This composite evaporitic basin could represent a lithospheric sag precursor to rifting and separation of ANACONDA – accompanied by the Chuos, Grand Conglomerat and Rapitan glaciogenic deposits (Evans 2000) – between c. 750 and 700 Ma. Finally, it demonstrates how the palaeomagnetic APW-matching method can generate a more refined palaeogeographic framework for supercontinent reconstructions; all previous models of Rodinia, using tectonostratigraphic comparisons or ‘closest-approach’ palaeomagnetic reconstructions, have placed the cratons together as tightly as possible – essentially ruling out even the possibility of Mediterranean-style remnant-ocean tectonism in the pre-Pangaean world.

As a final note, recall that the palaeomagnetic data from Australia were discordant in the present revised Rodinia model at c. 1140 Ma, requiring collision of Australia+Mawsonland to become a part of Rodinia at c. 1100 Ma. Proximity of Mawsonland to Tanzania in the Rodinia fit (Fig. 5b) implies convergence and inferred collision there as well. One difficulty with this inference is the lack of any direct evidence for c. 1100 Ma tectonism in the central Transantarctic Mountains (Goodge et al. 2001), despite some tenuous Nd-isotopic support for Mesoproterozoic activity there (Borg & DePaolo 1994). However, if Kokonyangi et al. (2006) are correct in proposing a c. 1080 Ma suture between Tanzania+Bangweulu and Congo cratons at the Kibaran orogen, then there is the intriguing possibility presented by this reconstruction, that Tanzania+Bangweulu was originally a fragment of Australia+Mawsonland, becoming ‘orphaned’ during mid-Neoproterozoic Rodinia breakup.

The juvenile Hf and Nd signatures of 1.4 Ga A-type granites preserved as clasts and detrital zircons in Transantarctic Mountains sediments (Goodge et al. 2008) have been used to support a connection with western Laurentia in the SWEAT juxtaposition. However, Goodge et al. (2008; their fig. 3a) illustrate other regions of the world with comparable magmatism of the same age: Cathaysia, eastern Congo, southern Amazonia and southwestern Baltica. If the revised Rodinia position for Australia+Mawsonland (Fig. 4b) is correct, then the general proximity of 1.4 Ga A–type granite terrains in Congo and Baltica make them the most attractive candidates as the originally contiguous extensions of the Antarctic magmatic province in pre-Rodinian times.

	Kalahari

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
As noted in a recent review of late Mesoproterozoic palaeomagnetic data from southern Africa (Gose et al. 2006), the two anchors of the Kalahari APW path are the c. 1100 Ma Umkondo grand-mean pole of highest reliability, followed by various moderately well grouped poles from c. 1000 Ma terranes within the Namaqua–Natal orogen. These two anchor poles permit Kalahari to have been a member of Rodinia throughout the intervening time; they are separated by about 80° or 100° of great-circle arc, depending on relative geomagnetic polarity, the larger value being similar to that separating Laurentian poles on the ‘master’ Rodinian APW path of the same pair of ages (Logan and Grenville loops, respectively). The precise dating of both Umkondo and early Keweenawan poles at 1108 Ma, with a pronounced geomagnetic polarity bias in both units, constrains the hemisphere option of relative reconstructions between the two cratons, such that the Grenville and Namaqua orogens cannot face each other (Hanson et al. 2004; Gose et al. 2006) as earlier proposed. In addition to this polarity constraint, if the c. 1000 Ma poles are aligned then Kalahari can occupy only one of two positions in relative palaeolatitude and palaeolongitude to Laurentia plus its surrounding cratons in Rodinia. The standard depiction of Kalahari's geon-10 APW path (e.g. Powell et al. 2001; Evans et al. 2002; Meert & Torsvik 2003; Tohver et al. 2006; Gose et al. 2006; Li et al. 2008) is shown in Figure 6a in simplified form, using the two anchor poles plus that of the Kalkpunt redbeds of eastern Namaqualand (Briden et al. 1979). Although Powell et al. (2001) suggested an age of 1065 Ma for the Kalkpunt red beds, recent U–Pb dating of a conformably underlying rhyolite indicates an age of only slightly younger than c. 1095 Ma (Pettersson et al. 2007). The APW arc length transcribed by this polarity option of the three poles is somewhat shorter than that of the Keweenawan APW track of Laurentia, but dating of the Namaqua–Natal poles is forgiving enough to allow for the precise mismatch. However, the reconstruction derived by this APW superposition is one in which Kalahari is widely separated from all other cratons in Rodinia – even if one were to choose more standard models involving Australia and other cratons to the SW of Laurentia. The Kalahari reconstruction shown in Figure 6a is, however, similar to that of Piper (2000, 2007), but as noted above this reconstruction produces numerous palaeomagnetic mismatches when high-quality individual results are considered rather than broad means.

View larger version (43K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 6. Superposition of Kalahari's 1110 Ma Umkondo palaeomagnetic pole with polarity constraint tied to the early Keweenawan Logan sills pole from Laurentia (Hanson et al. 2004; Gose et al. 2006), plus younger poles from the Namaqua and Natal Provinces in various polarity options (poles listed in Table 2). Panel (a) shows a large distance between Kalahari and the rest of Rodinia, whereas panel (b) illustrates the preferred reconstruction herein. Euler parameters for the rotation of Kalahari and its poles from the present African reference frame to Laurentia, in present North American coordinates, are (81.5°N, 187.4°E, –163.4°CCW) in panel (A) and (32.5°N, 307.5°E, +76.5°CCW) in panel (B).

The preferred reconstruction of Kalahari shown in Figure 6b is thus the only possible way to include this craton in the Rodinia assembly as early as 1100 Ma according to existing palaeomagnetic constraints. Other published solutions involve late collision of Kalahari into Rodinia at c. 1000 Ma (Pisarevsky et al. 2003a; Li et al. 2008). The well-known Namaqua-Natal belt of southern Kalahari shows the main phases of deformation at c. 1090–1060 Ma (Jacobs et al. 2008), which is typically correlated in an opposing collisional sense to the Ottawan orogeny of the Grenville Province in Laurentia. These reconstructions, however, must either violate the geomagnetic polarity match between early Keweenawan and Umkondo poles, or invoke an implausible 180-degree rotation of Kalahari relative to Laurentia as they approached each other in geon 10.

In the preferred reconstruction here (Fig. 6b), the more proximal Mesoproterozoic margin to the Laurentian side of Rodinia is the present northwestern side of Kalahari. Along that margin, a single c. 1300–1200 Ma orogen has been hypothesized (Singletary et al. 2003), and this orogen was stabilized prior to widespread large igneous province mafic magmatism at about 1110 Ma. In the revised Rodinia reconstruction presented herein, the NW Kalahari orogen is proposed to record collision between Kalahari and the Vostok margin of Australia+Mawsonland (Fig. 6). A complex collisional triple junction, suturing this orogen, the Namaqua belt and the Albany belt in Western Australia, would be partly reworked by subsequent Pan-African (Damaride) and Pinjarran tectonics, and partly buried by Antarctic ice; testing this model by correlating the details of the three collisions will be a challenging enterprise.

	India, South China, Tarim

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
Relative to Australia, the reconstructed positions of India, South China and Tarim are similar in this Rodinia model to previously published versions (Fig. 7). The reconstruction of India to Australia essentially follows Torsvik et al. (2001), that of South China relative to India follows Jiang et al. (2003) and that of Tarim to Australia follows Li et al. (1996), Powell & Pisarevsky (2002) and Li et al. (2008). Palaeomagnetic poles from these cratons are sparse, but they provide important constraints on Rodinia configurations of these blocks and also support the existence of a large loop in the Rodinian APW path at c. 800 Ma. Discussing the results in detail, numerous Indian poles (reviewed by Malone et al. 2008) are summarized by the three depicted in Figure 7. The most reliable is from the Malani rhyolitic large igneous province of Rajasthan, with various U–Pb ages centred around 770 Ma (Torsvik et al. 2001; Malone et al. 2008). Aside from this result, which has been reproduced numerous times in the past few decades, the Indian palaeomagnetic poles from Rodinia times are questionable either in quality or in age. The oft-cited pole from Harohalli alkaline dykes was previously assigned an age of c. 815 Ma, based on Ar/Ar ages (Radhakrishna & Mathew 1996). However, new U–Pb zircon data from these dykes suggest a much older age of c. 1190 Ma (cited in Malone et al. 2008). If the latter age is correct, then the Harohalli dykes pole is irrelevant for the present discussion, because this portion of Rodinia is proposed herein to have assembled around 1100 Ma or younger. There is also the pole from the well-dated Majhgawan kimberlite (1074±14 Ma by Ar/Ar; Gregory et al. 2006), which is nearly identical to poles from the nearby Rewa and Bhander sedimentary succession (Malone et al. 2008). The latter units have age uncertainties on the order of 500 Ma, as summarized by Malone et al. (2008). No field stability tests have been performed on either the Majhgawan kimberlite or the Rewa/Bhander units, so there remains the possibility that these poles represent a two-polarity magnetic overprint across north-central India. Such an interpretation could readily explain the large discordance between the Majhgawan virtual geomagnetic pole (VGP; not averaging geomagnetic secular variation due to brief emplacement of the kimberlite) and those from the nearly coeval Wajrakarur kimberlite field in south-central India (Miller & Hargraves 1994).

View larger version (60K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 7. Reconstruction of India (blue), South China (green), and Tarim (peach) near Australia as commonly depicted in Rodinia models. As with Figures 3, 4, 5, 6, all cratons and poles have been rotated into the present North American (Laurentian) reference frame (Table 3). The Laurentian APW path is simplified into a curve (light grey) for clarity. Also shown are three poles (red colour) with poor absolute age control but correct stratigraphic order from Svalbard (Maloof et al. 2006; Table 2), rotated to a modified position north of Greenland (Table 3) for better APW matching with both the Laurentian poles from geon 7 and the proposed APW loop at c. 800 Ma. Palaeomagnetic poles (abbreviated as in Table 2) are shown in the colours of their host cratons. The location of Tarim poles is consistent with the craton reconstruction in darker colour; the lighter-coloured alternative Tarim reconstruction aligns the Aksu dykes pole (Ak) with c. 800 Ma poles from other cratons, but results in a mismatch of the Beiyixi volcanics pole (Bei); poles from this alternative reconstruction are not illustrated, for sake of clarity. Queried ages of some of the Indian poles are discussed in text.

Palaeomagnetic poles from China are more straightforward to interpret. In South China (Yangtze craton), the Xiaofeng dykes yield a high palaeolatitude at 802±10 Ma (Li et al. 2004), and the Liantuo Formation red beds yield a moderate palaeolatitude at 748±12 Ma (Evans et al. 2000). Similarly, the Aksu dykes in Tarim were emplaced at high palaeolatitude at 807±12 Ma (Chen et al. 2004), and the Beiyixi volcanics were erupted at lower palaeolatitudes (Huang et al. 2005) at 755±15 Ma (Xu et al. 2005). Matching these two pairs of poles from South China and Tarim, however, results in a large distance between the cratons (not shown in Fig. 7), inconsistent with their strongly compatible Sinian geological histories (Lu et al. 2008a). Figure 7 shows two alternative positions of Tarim relative to the cratons heretofore discussed. The preferred position is shown in a darker colour, along with the properly rotated pair of Tarim poles. In this position, where Tarim is directly adjacent to both South China and (present NW) India, the 755 Ma Beiyixi pole is aligned with middle-geon-7 poles from Laurentia and other cratons; however, the 807 Ma Aksu dykes pole is discordant (Fig. 7). This could suggest post-800 Ma convergence between Tarim and Rodinia, or it could also be due to unrecognized local vertical-axis rotations of the Aksu area, as suggested by Li et al. (2008) to be a general problem for the minimally studied Tarim block.

Alternatively, the Aksu dykes pole could be aligned with the c. 800 Ma pole from the coeval Xiaofeng dykes in South China; in which case Tarim reconstructs next to northern Australia (lighter shade of peach colour in Fig. 7) in the same sense as Li et al. (1996, 2008). The 755 Ma Beiyixi pole, however, is removed from the Rodinian APW path in this reconstruction. This would suggest either early (pre-755 Ma) rifting of Tarim from Rodinia, or local vertical-axis rotations of the Quruqtagh region where the Beiyixi volcanics are exposed. A third alternative reconstruction of Tarim – adjacent to eastern Australia, based on a proposed radiating dyke swarm at c. 820 Ma (Lu et al. 2008a) – is broadly compatible with the palaeomagnetic data from 755 Ma but, ironically, not c. 800 Ma.

The present analysis leaves the position of Tarim somewhat uncertain, but the preferred position is that described first, above, and illustrated with darker peach colour in Figure 7. The main reason for this preference is that new palaeomagnetic results from Cambrian–Ordovician sedimentary rocks in the Quruqtagh area (Zhao et al. 2008) are most compatible with the Gondwanaland APW path if Tarim is reconstructed near Arabia, that is separated from Australia by India and South China. If either the northern or eastern Australian juxtapositions is correct for Tarim in Rodinia, then Tarim would need to rift from that position and re-collide with East Gondwanaland in its peri-Arabian position prior to mid-Cambrian time. Neither Tarim nor northern India records Ediacaran-age orogenic activity that would document such convergence.

Although the c. 800 Ma poles just described are far removed from the established Laurentian APW path in the proposed reconstruction, they constitute important independent support from several Rodinian cratons that they – if not the entire supercontinent – experienced an oscillatory pair of rotations at that time. The kinematic evidence for this proposed rotation does not specify a dynamic cause, but inertial-interchange true polar wander (IITPW) events are the most straightforward explanation (Li et al. 2004; Maloof et al. 2006). When the Svalbard magnetostratigraphic data of Maloof et al. (2006) are considered (red colour in Fig. 7), they provide the hitherto unrecognized evidence from Laurentia for the APW loop indicated by India (if Harohalli dykes are c. 800 Ma), South China, Tarim and Congo (Fig. 5b). The precise reconstruction of Svalbard relative to Greenland is uncertain, but direct connection between the two areas of Laurentia are strongly supported by lithostratigraphy (Maloof et al. 2006). Also, because the Svalbard APW shift is recorded in several widely separated, continuously sampled magnetostratigraphic sections, local vertical-axis rotations cannot account for the directional shifts: the APW loop at c. 800 Ma is a genuine feature of the Laurentian palaeomagnetic database that must be included in all Rodinia models.

The reconstruction of India, South China and Tarim, adjacent to Australia as shown in Figure 7, produces some intriguing tectonic juxtapositions, in which compatible histories can be considered as predictions of the model. First, the Sibao orogen in South China (Li et al. 1996, 2002) appears to strike directly into northwestern India, where earliest Neoproterozoic tectonomagmatic activity is postulated to be continuous with the Delhi foldbelt in India (Deb et al. 2001), under Neoproterozoic sedimentary cover of Rajasthan and north–central Pakistan. If this represents a collisional orogen, then most of cratonic India should have more affinities with the Cathaysia block in South China, colliding with the Yangtze+Tarim craton during final Rodinia assembly. The Tarimian orogeny of similar age (Lu et al. 2008a) could express a poorly exposed continuation of this collisional belt.

On the other side of India, the c. 1000–950 Ma Eastern Ghats orogen (Mezger & Cosca 1999) and its continuation as the Rayner terrane in Antarctica (Kelly et al. 2002), extends east of Prydz Bay (Kinny et al. 1993; Wang et al. 2008), and according to this reconstruction splays into the Edmund foldbelt of Western Australia, which deformed 1070 Ma sills and their host Bangemall basin sedimentary rocks about tight NW–SE axes and led to moderate isotopic disturbance (Occhipinti & Reddy 2009). The full extent of this orogen is probably hidden under the East Antarctic icecap (including the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains; Veevers & Saeed 2008), and likely involves smaller Archaean–Palaeoproterozoic cratonic fragments such as the Ruker terrane (Phillips et al. 2006). The orogen is proposed here to involve collision with Kalahari along the latter craton's Namaqua margin at c. 1090–1060 Ma (Jacobs et al. 2008). Tectonothermal events of similar age in the Central Indian Tectonic Zone (Chatterjee et al. 2008; Maji et al. 2008) connect the Delhi and Eastern Ghats/Rayner orogens in poorly understood ways.

The reconstruction also suggests that the precisely coeval igneous events recorded on several cratons at 755 Ma are genetically related: Mundine Well dyke swarm in Australia (Wingate & Giddings 2000), Malani large igneous province in India (Torsvik et al. 2001), Nanhua rift and related provinces in South China (Li et al. 2003) and Beiyixi volcanics in Tarim (Xu et al. 2005). As will be shown below, western Siberia also reconstructs immediately adjacent to Tarim, and the Sharyzhalgai massif contains mafic dykes of precisely the same age (Sklyarov et al. 2003). The Malani region in India is proposed here as the central focus of a hotspot or mantle plume with radiating arms extending across these cratons.

	North China, Siberia

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
Both North China and Siberia lack coherent late Mesoproterozoic (‘Grenvillian’) orogens, although possible vestiges can be found along the northern and southern margins of North China (Zhai et al. 2003; but see also discussion in Lu et al. 2008b). Similar carbonate-dominated mid-Proterozoic platform or passive-margin sedimentary successions on both cratons have inspired, along with palaeomagnetic support, hypotheses of a close palaeogeographic connection between the two blocks in Rodinia and in earlier times (Zhai et al. 2003; Wu et al. 2005; Zhang et al. 2006; Li et al. 2008). A recent U–Pb age determination of c. 1380 Ma on ash beds in the upper part of the North China cover succession (Su et al. 2008), however, shows that this succession is almost entirely older than the bulk of ‘Riphean’ sediments across Siberia (Khudoley et al. 2007). The older age of the North China succession also demonstrates that there are only two moderately reliable palaeomagnetic poles (Zhang et al. 2006) from the Rodinia interval: the Cuishang Formation (c. 950 Ma?) and the Nanfen Formation (c. 790 Ma?). Ages from both of these formations are very tenuous.

Pisarevsky and Natapov (2003) summarized the Meso-Neoproterozoic stratigraphic record across the Siberian craton, as well as its palaeomagnetic database. The most reliable palaeomagnetic poles define an APW trend that is supported by less reliable results; only the three most reliable are included in this synthesis, but the conclusion is not affected by incorporating the others. The present analysis does not include the high-quality Linok Formation pole from the Turukhansk region (Gallet et al. 2000), because it restores precisely atop that of the likely correlative Malgina Formation in the Uchur-Maya region marginal to the Aldan shield, after restoration of the Devonian Vilyuy rift in central Siberia (Table 1).

Matching of the Siberian APW path from the Uchur-Maya region with the Keweenawan APW track to Grenville loop from Laurentia results in two possibilities, because of geomagnetic polarity options. The first option (not shown) produces the typical reconstruction of Siberia with its southern margin in the vicinity of northern Laurentia (option ‘A’ of Pisarevsky & Natapov 2003; Pisarevsky et al. 2003a; Li et al. 2008; Pisarevsky et al. 2008), The hypothesized reconstruction of Siberia (Fig. 8) is essentially the same as ‘option B’ of Pisarevsky & Natapov (2003) and the first option discussed by Meert & Torsvik (2003). Both of those papers concluded that such a reconstruction would probably exclude Siberia because of the great distance from Laurentia, but the present revised Rodinia model covers this gap with Baltica, Australia, India, and North China.

View larger version (48K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 8. Reconstruction of North China (tan) and Siberia (pink) directly adjacent to India on the outer edge of Rodinia. All cratons and their similarly coloured poles have been rotated into the present North American (Laurentian) reference frame (Table 3). The Laurentian APW path is simplified into a curve (light grey), with the additional APW loop at c. 800 Ma (see text and Fig. 7) indicated by the dashed segment. Among the North China and Siberia poles shown here, all but the Kandyk Formation (Kan) are poorly constrained in age.

Siberia is also proposed to have been connected to India and North China prior to Rodinia's amalgamation in the late Mesoproterozoic. Pisarevsky & Natapov (2003) summarized the Riphean stratigraphic architecture of the present-day margins of Siberia, demonstrating in many areas a clear thickening of strata away from the craton into deeper-water sedimentary facies. The long-lived Mesoproterozoic connections to North China and India (Fig. 8) would be inconsistent with the Siberian stratigraphic record if it could be demonstrated that the Turukhansk, Igarka, or northern Siberian margins faced the open ocean through the Meso-Neoproterozoic transition. However, in the best-documented areas of Turukhansk, there is no preserved record of substantial westward thickening of the Riphean stratigraphy as would be expected for a continent–ocean crustal transition, nor is there any preserved evidence of deep-water facies in the middle Riphean succession (Bartley et al. 2001; Pisarevsky & Natapov 2003; Khudoley et al. 2007). According to the available information, the present northwestern margin of Siberia is more likely a mid–late Neoproterozoic truncation of a more extensive Rodinian plate with widespread middle Riphean epicratonic cover.

	Amazonia, West Africa, Plata

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
For the past 25 years, Amazonia has been the craton of choice for proposed colliders with the Grenville margin of Laurentia at the end of the Mesoproterozoic Era (e.g. Bond et al. 1984; Dalziel 1991, 1997; Hoffman 1991; Weil et al. 1998; Pisarevsky et al. 2003a; Tohver et al. 2006; Li et al. 2008). This is perhaps surprising, given how many alternative possibilities exist due to the global preponderance of late Mesoproterozoic (‘Grenvillian’) orogens among the world's cratons (Fig. 1). The Laurentia+Amazonia connection is broadly supported by Pb-isotopic signatures (Loewy et al. 2003), but without a globally comprehensive dataset such comparisons are merely indicative rather than diagnostic. If any craton-scale tectonic comparisons are to be made, then the progressively younging, accretionary character of Amazonia would fit much better along strike of southwestern Laurentia (Santos et al. 2008) rather than in the mirrored configuration of the two cratons in typical Rodinia models. The palaeomagnetic evidence in support of the Laurentia+Amazonia connection in Rodinia is not particularly strong, either. Based on new palaeomagnetic data, Tohver et al. (2002, 2004) and D'Agrella-Filho et al. (2003, 2008) have successively modified the kinematics of the putative Laurentia+Amazonia collision. If confined to such a collisional model, the data now demand two unusual kinematic features: (1) c. 5000 km of sinistral motion with Amazonia occupying positions adjacent to Texas and Labrador at 1.2 and 1.0 Ga, respectively; and (2) 90° of anticlockwise rotation of Amazonia relative to Laurentia, so that Amazonia appears to roll like a wheel along the Grenvillian margin during its syncollisional sinistral odyssey. Such odd kinematics could be avoided if the observations were not confined by the initial assumption of a Laurentia+Amazonia collision.

Figure 9 shows the available palaeomagnetic poles from Amazonia during the Rodinia interval. The Nova Floresta (NF) and Fortuna Formation (FF) poles are fully published (Tohver et al. 2002; D'Agrella-Filho et al. 2008), whereas the Aguapei sills (Agua) result is presented in abstract only (D'Agrella-Filho et al. 2003). This latter result is important for constraining the possible position of Amazonia in Rodinia, however, because it, like the Nova Floresta data, is from mafic igneous rocks constrained in age by the Ar/Ar method. The Fortuna Formation red beds are interpreted as gaining their diagenetic hematite remanence at c. 1150 Ma, according to SHRIMP U–Pb dating of xenotime (D'Agrella-Filho et al. 2008), but that age assignment is questioned here because the likely early-diagenetic xenotime U–Pb age may have little bearing on the timing of hematite pigmentation in the studied sandstone. The reconstruction of Amazonia relative to Laurentia shown in Figure 9 predicts a younger age of c. 1020 Ma for the growth of remanence-bearing hematite pigments in the Fortuna Formation.

View larger version (51K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 9. ‘COBRA’ reconstruction of Amazonia, West Africa, and Plata near western Laurentia. Among these three cratons, only Amazonia has reliable palaeomagnetic constraints from the Rodinia time interval. Cratons are rotated into the present North American reference frame according to Table 3.

As recently reviewed by Tohver et al. (2006), palaeomagnetic results from the Meso-Neoproterozoic of West Africa are wholly unreliable. For the Plata Craton, Rapalini & Sánchez-Bettucci (2008) similarly show that there are no reliable Rodinian palaeomagnetic constraints. The separation between western Laurentia and Amazonia (Fig. 9), must be filled with cratonic fragments that would form the conjugate rift margin of the Cordilleran miogeocline in either mid-Neoproterzoic or terminal Neoproterozoic times (Bond 1997; Colpron et al. 2002; Harlan et al. 2003). Given that all of the other large cratons of the world have been accounted for in the present Rodinia model, the simplest placements of West Africa, Plata and smaller cratonic fragments in South America (Fuck et al. 2008) are within the gap between Laurentia and Amazonia (Fig. 9). These juxtapositions are collectively referred to as COBRA, named after the general link between the proto-Cordilleran rifted margin of Laurentia with the proto-Brasiliano/Pharuside rifted margins of the West Gondwanaland cratons.

COBRA unites truncated Archean and Palaeoproterozoic basement provinces among these cratons, suggesting that the amalgamation persisted from the assembly of supercontinent Nuna at 1.8 Ga (Hoffman 1996) until Rodinia fragmentation in mid-Neoproterozoic times. In this reconstruction, 2.1–2.3 Ga terranes in subsurface Yukon-Alberta (Ross 2002) continue into the Birimian (Gasquet et al. 2004) and Maroni–Itacaiunas (Tassinari et al. 2000) provinces of West Africa and Amazonia, respectively. The Archean Wyoming/Medicine Hat craton (Chamberlain et al. 2003) would have been contiguous with the Nico Perez terrane in Uruguay (Hartmann et al. 2001) and Luis Alvez craton in southern Brazil (Sato et al. 2003), constituting parts of an elongate collage of Archean regions extending to the Leo massif in West Africa (Thiéblemont et al. 2004) and the Carajas block in Brazil (Tassinari et al. 2000). Palaeoproterozoic accretion to the south of these provinces includes the Mojave province (Bennett & De Paolo 1987) as the orphaned edge of an extensive region of juvenile 2.2–1.7 Ga terranes in South America (Tassinari et al. 2000; Santos et al. 2000, 2003), characterized by highly radiogenic (²⁰⁷Pb-enriched) common-lead isotopic signatures (Wooden & Miller 1990; Tosdal 1996). Detrital zircons of 1.5–1.9 Ga age in the Mesoproterozoic Belt-Purcell basin (Ross et al. 1992; Ross & Villeneuve 2003) find numerous potential sources in extensive granites of that age interval in South America (Tassinari et al. 2000). The 1.3–1.1 Ga Grenville orogen traces southwestward through Sonora (Iriondo et al. 2004) and, according to the COBRA hypothesis, into Brazil and Bolivia, where it bifurcates into the Aguapei and Sunsas belts (Sadowski & Bettencourt 1996). Direct juxtaposition of these provinces in Amazonia with SW North America (Santos et al. 2008) is not allowable palaeomagnetically, by any of the three poles discussed above, regardless of their precise ages within the Meso-Neoproterozoic interval.

COBRA is proposed to have begun rifting at 780 Ma, manifested by the Gunbarrel large igneous province in North America (Harlan et al. 2003), and preceding highly oblique dextral separation (Brookfield 1993) that prolonged rift magmatism to at least 685 Ma (Lund et al. 2003) and delayed passive-margin thermal subsidence to latest Neoproterozoic time (Bond 1997). Precise geochronology of the Gourma–Volta rift basins in West Africa, presently lacking, could provide a direct test of the proposed COBRA fit. Indications of c. 780 Ma mafic magmatism within a possible West African craton fragment in the westernmost Hoggar shield (Caby 2003) and along the distal western São Francisco margin in Brazil (Pimentel et al. 2004) may extend the Gunbarrel province into those regions. Proposing a sequence of rifts in southern South America is difficult due to Phanerozoic cover (compare Ramos 1988 and Cordani et al. 2003), but kinematic constraints on a COBRA–West Gondwanaland transition require some events at c. 780 Ma and others younger, represented by glaciogenic successions on southernmost Amazonia (Trindade et al. 2003) and eastern Rio Plata (Gaucher et al. 2003) that are correlated to the Marinoan ice age ending at 635 Ma (Condon et al. 2005).

	Nuna to Rodinia to Gondwanaland

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
Any palaeomagnetic reconstruction of a supercontinent requires concordance of data from constituent cratons into a coherent aggregate APW path. Such a path for the proposed long-lived Rodinia model is shown in Figure 10. The numerous loops and turns could raise objection due to the implied complexity of the supercontinent's motion through its nearly 400 Ma of existence. Nonetheless, all of the loops are generated simply by joining the Laurentian and Baltic APW paths in the proposed reconstruction (Fig. 3). The Laurentia+Baltica juxtapositions, before and after 1100 Ma, are the least controversial aspect of the present Rodinia model, so the APW complexity of Rodinia will be implied by any alternative model incorporating these relationships. Adding all other cratons' reliable palaeomagnetic data from 1100–750 Ma, in the ‘radically’ revised Rodinia proposed herein, has resulted in no additional APW loops.

View larger version (65K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 10. Rodinia master apparent polar wander path in the present North American (Laurentian) reference frame. Palaeomagnetic poles are coloured according to the host cratons as depicted here and in Figure 1, and are tabulated with abbreviations in Table 2. Late Mesoproterozoic (‘Grenvillian’) orogenic belts are shaded grey.

Because the Siberian craton is surrounded on many sides by c. 1700–1500 Ma rifted passive margins (Pisarevsky & Natapov 2003), it is likely to have lain near the centre of Nuna. In contrast, Figure 11 shows Siberia at the edge of Rodinia. This would suggest that the kinematic evolution between Nuna and Rodinia was partly ‘extroverted’ (Murphy & Nance 2003, 2005). However, proximity of the Amazonia, West Africa, Congo+São Francisco and Plata cratons in the proposed Rodinia (Fig. 11) suggests long-lived connections from the Palaeoproterozoic (similarities noted by Rogers 1996, and inspiration for his conjectured ‘Atlantica’ assemblage of that age), rearranging only moderately to form portions of Rodinia and Gondwanaland. The relationships among this group of cratons, as well as the longstanding proximity between Laurentia and Baltica (through nearly the entire latter half of Earth history) suggest a more ‘introverted’ kinematic style of supercontinental evolution.

View larger version (64K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 11. Rodinia radically revised, reconstructed to palaeolatitudes soon after assembly and shortly prior to breakup. (a) 1070 Ma reconstruction showing extents of late Mesoproterozoic (‘Grenvillian’) orogens, both exposed and inferred (dark grey), and the earlier collision between Laurentia and Congo (light grey). The figure is slightly anachronistic, as several blocks are proposed to have collided at 1050 Ma, and South China and Tarim could have joined as late as c. 850 Ma (Table 3); however, palaeogeographic reconstructions for those younger ages would involve substantial components of Rodinia over the poles, rendering the Mollweide projection uninformative. (b) 780 Ma reconstruction showing incipient breakup rift margins (red) and transform offsets (black). Ridge segments are dashed where not precisely constrained in location.

Where Table 3 presents a range of ages, these are set by the limits of palaeomagnetic concordance versus discordance when rotated by the given Euler parameters. Parenthetical values indicate a best estimate based on geological histories of either collision or rifting, or by ‘piggy-back’ of an intervening collision or rift with Laurentia. The identical-aged c. 1050 Ma onset of proposed Euler reconstructions listed for India, North China and Siberia are an example of this latter case; all these cratons are proposed to have sutured, as a unified plate, to the Rodinia assemblage along the Eastern Ghats–Rayner orogen.

Although this model of Rodinia includes widespread assembly of the supercontinent at 1100–1050 Ma, probably the most contentious of its implications is that all the large cratons are accounted for, and there are no sizable blocks left to play colliding roles in any of the Sveconorwegian, Grenville and Sunsas orogens. Instead, these three orogens are placed along strike of each other, facing the Mirovian Ocean. All three orogens are characterized by an extensive prehistory of accretionary tectonism along the same margins, with successively younger age provinces progressing outward from Archaean cratonic nuclei. The great width and longevity of these three accretionary systems is reminiscient of Panthalassan or circum-Pangaean orogens of the Phanerozoic. The model proposed here requires originally farther oceanward extents of the three orogens as younger juvenile material would have accreted during the early Neoproterzoic. Then, mid-Mirovian spreading ridges would have propagated into the orogens and removed the outboard, youngest terrains as ‘ribbon’ continents. The protracted record of tectonism in the Scottish Highlands, inlcuding the Knoydartian orogeny at c. 850–800 Ma with further phases possibly as young as c. 750–700 Ma (reviewed by Cawood et al. 2007) could represent the only intact remnants of a once-extensive accretionary orogenic belt that lay outboard of the present Grenville orogen.

The present location of these postulated ribbon terrains is unknown, but the kinematic histories of more recent examples suggest that they would either be transported strike-slip along the circum-Mirovian subduction girdle around Rodinia (such as present-day Baja California or the more extreme possibility of thousands of kilometres in a ‘Baja–British Columbia’ evolution), or separated far into Mirovia toward an unprescribed fate (such as present Zealandia). Using these analogies, we might expect to find them today as dismembered basement units within the Avalonian–Cadomian orogen (Evans 2005; Murphy et al. 2000; Keppie et al. 2003) or Borborema–Pharuside strike-slip-dominated orogenic system (Caby 2003), or perhaps partly to completely recycled into the mantle by subduction-erosion (Scholl & von Huene 2007).

Figure 11b shows the incipient breakup of Rodinia at 780 Ma, according to the revised Rodinia model. A first stage of disaggregation at c. 780–720 Ma around the western and northern margins of Laurentia, liberated the Congo, West African, Amazonian and Plata cratons that would eventually recombine to form West Gondwanaland between c. 640 and c. 530 Ma (Trompette 1997; Brito Neves et al. 1999; Piuzana et al. 2003; Valeriano et al. 2004; John et al. 2004; Tohver et al. 2006). Although the interval between rifting and collision in the Brasiliano foldbelts was brief (‘young, short-lived’ orogenic cycle of Trompette 1997), the predominant strike-slip component of motion during assembly allowed those belts to contain oceanic (Mirovian) terranes as old as c. 900–750 Ma (Pimentel & Fuck 1992; Babinski et al. 1996). The prominent dextral shear zones of the Borborema Province in northeastern Brazil, continue into west–central Africa (Vauchez et al. 1995; Cordani et al. 2003). These bound enigmatic terranes recording unusual ‘Grenvillian’ tectonothermal events that are otherwise largely absent in cratonic South America (Fuck et al. 2008), bearing witness to the large amount of strike-slip offset accommodating the assembly of West Gondwanaland.

On the other side of the proposed Rodinia, the kinematic evolution toward East Gondwanaland follows more conventional reconstructions, which comes as little surprise because the relative positions of Australia, India, South China, and Tarim are similar to those earlier models. India migrated sinistrally along the Pinjarra orogen to arrive at its Gondwanaland position relative to Australia by c. 550 Ma (Powell & Pisarevsky 2002). South China and Tarim would have lain along the same tectonic plate during that time, arriving at acceptable positions for their palaeomagnetic reconstruction into Gondwanaland (Zhang 2004; Zhao et al. 2008). In the palaeogeographic co-ordinate system of 780 Ma (Fig. 11b), Siberia would have rifted to the east, separating from East Gondwanaland fragments. It is debatable whether North China was part of Palaeozoic Gondwanaland; if not, it too may have rifted far away with Siberia. Kalahari would have migrated to the north in the reconstructed co-ordinate system of Figure 11b, joining the West Gondwanaland cratons as they drifted away from Laurentia+Baltica. Final disaggregation of Rodinia occurred c. 610–550 Ma, the age of extensive mafic magmatism in eastern Laurentia (reviewed by Cawood et al. 2001; Puffer 2002) and Norway (Svenningsen 2001).

Global palaeogeography at the end of the Neoproterozoic Era remains one of the most challenging problems in palaeomagnetic reconstruction, more difficult even than the quest for Rodinia. This is due to four factors: (1) lack of high-precision biostratigraphy in the Precambrian to correlate successions and to date palaeomagnetic poles from sedimentary rocks; (2) scarcity of datable volcanic successions on the large cratons, relative to geon 7; (3) likelihood that most cratons were travelling independently during the transition between Rodinia and Gondwanaland, thus disallowing the APW superposition method used in this paper; and (4) abnormally high dispersion of palaeomagnetic poles from each craton indicating either rapid plate tectonics, rapid TPW, or a non-uniformitarian geomagnetic field during that time. The most complete model incorporating the global tectonic record and palaeomagnetic data is by Collins & Pisarevsky (2005), but this model still needed to resort to separate options of a low- versus high-latitude subset of the Laurentian palaeomagnetic data. If TPW is responsible for the large dispersions in palaeomagnetic poles, which if read literally would typically imply oscillatory motions conforming to the IITPW model of Evans (2003), then there is some hope to produce reconstructions using the long-lived prolate nonhydrostatic geoid as the reference axis, rather than the geomagnetic-rotational reference frame (Raub et al. 2007). This alternative method, however, produces reconstructions that are highly sensitive to small errors in magnetization ages, depending on the rapidity of the putative TPW oscillations. Regardless of which class of interpretations will ultimately prove valid, questions such as the widths of Iapetan separation following Rodinian juxtaposition of Amazonia with eastern Laurentia (e.g. Cawood et al. 2001), must be considered premature until more precisely dated palaeomagnetic poles are obtained.

	Concluding Remarks

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
Nearly two decades have elapsed since McMenamin & McMenamin (1990, p. 95) coined the name ‘Rodinia’ for the late Proterozoic supercontinent and ‘Mirovia’ for its encircling palaeo-ocean. Within a year of these monikers' establishment, a general model for Rodinia was conceived (Hoffman 1991), which, despite numerous challenges from both tectonostratigraphy and palaeomagnetism, has remained largely intact in the latest consensus model (Li et al. 2008). However, in order to accommodate the palaeomagnetic data in particular, this latest model has shortened the duration of Rodinia's existence to merely 75 Ma (900–825 Ma). Such brevity is acceptable and actualistic in terms of the short-lived Pangaea landmass, but it appears at odds with Hoffman's (1991) original implication of globally widespread 1300–1000 Ma orogens and c. 750 Ma rifted margins, as representing Rodinia's assembly and breakup, respectively.

Herein, I have proposed a Rodinia model that is both long-lived according to the original concept, and compatible with the most reliable palaeomagnetic data from the Meso-Neoproterozoic interval, with minimal number of APW loops. My model is a radical departure from all previous models (e.g. Li et al. 2008). Which existing Rodinia model, if any, will approximate the ‘true’ form of the Neoproterozoic supercontinent? As Wegener [1929 (1966, p. 17)] wrote: ‘the earth at any one time can only have had one configuration.’ How will we test the current Rodinia models and achieve a long-lasting consensus that converges toward the true palaeogeography?

Dalziel (1999) identified six criteria for validity of a ‘credible’ supercontinent: (1) account for all rifted passive margins at the time of breakup; (2) accurately map continental promontories and embayments, that is in spherical geometry; (3) display sutures related to assembly; (4) match older tectonic fabrics where appropriate; (5) show compatibility with palaeomagnetic data; and (6) be compatible with realistic kinematic evolution forward in time toward Pangaea. The revised Rodinia model proposed herein satisfies all six of these conditions, if one allows for a special consideration involving conjugate rifted and collisional margins, as follows: the past few years of palaeogeographic reconstruction of the Mesozoic–Cenozoic world have led to increasing recogniztion of ribbon-shaped continental fragments with lengths on the order of thousands of kilometres (e.g. Lomonosov Ridge; Lawver et al. 2002; Lord Howe Rise/Zealandia; Gaina et al. 2003). Farther back in time, the Cimmeride continental ribbon formed the Permian rift conjugate to the >5000 km northern passive margin of Gondwanaland (Stampfli & Borel 2002). Tectonic shuffling and reworking of Cimmeride blocks within the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic collage has largely obscured their original geometric continuity. The Lomonosov Ridge and Lord Howe Rise/Zealandia ribbons are yet to migrate to their final dispositions within accretionary orogens, but they are unlikely to arrive in pristine form. I propose that similar effects may hamper our ability to quantify the passive margin lengths of any Precambrian continental ribbons. In the case of Zealandia, separation from Australia+Antarctica roughly followed the geometry of the Terra Australis orogen (Cawood 2005), thus ending a Wilson cycle without a continent-continent collision. In the Transantarctic Mountains, the rift propagated far enough inboard to bring some of the oldest, most internal segments of the belt (Cambrian–Ordovician Ross orogen) directly in contact with the oceanic passive margin. Would future palaeogeographers interpret this record as one of Cambrian–Ordovician continent–continent collision, followed by tectonic stability inside a supercontinent, and subsequent Mesozoic breakup of that supercontinent? This example highlights the difficulty in robustly characterizing tectonic histories of Precambrian orogens without a palaeogeographic framework. With focused effort on obtaining key geochronologic and palaeomagnetic data from the Rodinian time interval, we may be able to provide that framework.

	Acknowledgments

Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 
These ideas have evolved through the last five years, benefiting from discussions with S. Bryan, P. Cawood, A. Collins, B. Collins, D. Corrigan, I. Dalziel, B. de Waele, R. Ernst, I. Fitzsimons, R. Fuck, C. Gower, P. Hoffman, K. Karlstrom, A. Kröner, Z.-X. Li, A. Maloof, B. Murphy, V. Pease, M. Pimentel, S. Pisarevsky, the late C. Powell, T. Rivers, D. Thorkelson, E. Tohver and M. Wingate. P. Hoffman, I. Dalziel, C. MacNiocaill, and R. Van der Voo provided helpful criticisms on earlier versions of the manuscript; P. Cawood and S. Pisarevsky gave expedient and constructive reviews of this iteration. This work was supported by a Fellowship in Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

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Top Abstract Motivation Methods Laurentia Baltica Australia+Mawsonland Congo+Sao Francisco Kalahari India, South China, Tarim North China, Siberia Amazonia, West Africa, Plata Nuna to Rodinia to... Concluding Remarks Acknowledgments References

 

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