North China Craton

The North China Craton is a continental crustal block in northeast China, Inner Mongolia, the Yellow Sea and North Korea, preserving one of Earth's most complete records of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic processes. It formed from separate continental blocks that amalgamated during the Paleoproterozoic, between about 2.5 and 1.8 billion years ago, and then remained tectonically stable until the middle Ordovician, roughly 480 million years ago, when destruction of its deep root began to destabilize parts of its Eastern Block. The craton covers approximately 1.5 million square kilometers, its Precambrian basement holding zircons as old as 4.1 billion years and rock as old as 3.8 billion years, overlain by younger Phanerozoic sedimentary and igneous rock, and it hosts major iron ore and rare earth element deposits alongside an important fossil record.