Evolution of Thought on the Evolution of a Craton: New Perspectives on the Origin and Reworking of the Western Churchill Province

The western Churchill Province is one of the largest yet most poorly known cratons of the Canadian Shield. Situated in Canada’s northern frontier, and bounded by two Paleoproterozoic orogens, it has been called ‘that part of the Canadian Shield left over after the adjacent, better defined, younger a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: S. J. Pehrsson
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Chesterfield Inlet
Davidson
Heywood
Walcott
Lake Athabasca
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.611.8706
http://www.lithoprobe.ca/Contributed Abstracts/Poster Presentation/pehrsson-lithoprobe.pdf
Description
Summary:The western Churchill Province is one of the largest yet most poorly known cratons of the Canadian Shield. Situated in Canada’s northern frontier, and bounded by two Paleoproterozoic orogens, it has been called ‘that part of the Canadian Shield left over after the adjacent, better defined, younger and older structural provinces have been delineated ’ (Davidson, 1972). First regionally explored as part of the Geological Survey’s helicopter reconnaissance programs of the 1950’s and 1960’s, it was defined by Stockwell (1962), as a province of Archean and Paleoproterozoic domains that had been severely deformed and metamorphosed during the Hudsonian (Trans-Hudsonian) orogeny. Targeted regional mapping continued through the 1970’s and 1980’s and culminated with preliminary subdivisions (Heywood and Schau, 1978; Eade, 1985; Lewry et al., 1985), which recognized a NE-SW trending limit of ‘Hudsonian’ reworking stretching from Chesterfield Inlet to Lake Athabasca. Hoffman’s 1990 subdivision of the Churchill established the Archean Rae and Hearne Provinces, separated by the Snowbird tectonic zone (STZ). This major geophysical feature has been interpreted both as a Paleoproterozoic suture (Gibb and Walcott, 1982; Hoffman, 1990; Ross et al., 1991) and an intracontinental accommodation fault (Hanmer et al., 1995).

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