Ukrainian Shield

The Ukrainian Shield, also called the Ukrainian Crystalline Massif, is the southwestern shield of the East European Craton, covering an area of about 200,000 square kilometers over a stretch roughly 1,000 kilometers long and up to 250 kilometers wide. Its rock is ancient, combining Archean crust between 3.2 and 3.8 billion years old in its southwestern and eastern portions with Early Proterozoic orogenic belts dated to between 2.1 and 2.3 billion years old, and it is recognized as a major pegmatite province divided into seven megastructures, each with its own distinct mineralogy and geochemistry. As part of the East European Craton, a stable ancient continental platform, it shares close geological ties with the neighboring Voronezh Massif to the east, and the Ilyinets impact crater lies along the boundary between two of its megastructures, the Rosynsko-Tikychki and Dnistersko-Buzki zones.