Superior Craton

The Superior Craton is a stable block of Archean crust spanning Quebec, Ontario and southeastern Manitoba in Canada along with northern Minnesota in the United States, covering roughly 1.57 million square kilometers, the largest craton formed anywhere during the Archean eon. Its rock records geological activity from about 4.3 to 2.57 billion years ago, including the growth, drifting and deformation of both oceanic and continental crust, and it is divided into distinct domains, from granitic gneiss in the northwest to metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rock in the south, built up through a series of at least five major mountain-building episodes between about 2,720 and 2,680 million years ago as separate terranes accreted onto its margins. It forms the core of the Canadian Shield and is bounded by younger Proterozoic mountain belts, including the Trans-Hudson and Grenville orogens, and it hosts significant deposits of lode gold, diamonds in kimberlite pipes, massive sulfide ore, iron formations and rare earth elements. This entity documents the Superior Craton specifically as a geological formation, the ancient crustal block itself, distinct from Lake Superior, the body of water that lies along part of its margin.