A new tool for Canada's exploration industry: Using the large igneous province record to reconstruct supercontinents back to 2.7 Ga

随着金融危机的缓解，资源勘探行业（采矿和石油公司）再次扩张以满足不断增长的需求。然而，大多数明显的资源已经找到，需要新的工具来加强勘探战略，以找到更深的隐藏矿床。对于加拿大及其采矿和石油勘探公司来说，了解世界上其他哪些大陆块在过去的地质时代曾与加拿大大陆块（或其组成部分）相邻，将是一个重要的优势。这些信息将使富含经济重要矿物的地带能够从地球上其他以前相邻但现在遥远的地区追溯到加拿大。只是在最近几年，这一长期寻求的重建过去大陆的目标才有可能实现。随着用放射性时钟回收和分析小颗粒稀有矿物的改进，科学家现在可以精确地测定所有短时间，大体积火山事件的真实日期，称为大火成岩省（LIP），并将这些事件的组成部分与碎片大陆相关联。在概念验证测试中，我们的研究团队发现，大约27亿至20亿年前：魁北克东部可能与津巴布韦接壤（两个地区之间有丰富的矿藏）;安大略省南部和魁北克与北方接壤;魁北克北方和拉布拉多与格陵兰岛南部相连。矿业和石油公司正在为一个新的5年期工业-政府-大学项目（www.supercontinent.org）提供125万美元，以期在寻找新资源方面获得竞争优势。这是一项独特的全球合作，将全球40多名研究人员联系在一起。它为加拿大研究生提供了参与一个重大全球项目的机会，以“完成板块构造革命”，并为加拿大的采矿和石油工业开发一个强大的勘探工具。

As the financial crisis abates, the resource exploration industry (mining and oil companies) is again expanding to meet growing demand. However, most of the obvious resources have been found and new tools are needed to sharpen exploration strategies to find more deeply hidden deposits. For Canada and its mining and oil exploration companies, it would be a significant advantage to know which other continental blocks around the world were formerly adjacent to the Canadian landmass (or its component pieces) in past geological times. Such information would allow belts rich in economically-important minerals to be traced into Canada from other formerly adjacent, but now distal, regions of the Earth. Only in recent years has this long-sought goal of reconstructing past continents come within reach. With improvements in recovering and analyzing small grains of rare minerals with radioactive clocks, it is now possible for scientists to precisely date viritually all short duration, large volume volcanic events, known as Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs), and to correlate components of such events across pieces of fragmented continents. In proof-of-concept tests, our research team has discovered that about 2.7 billion to 2.0 billion years ago: eastern Quebec was likely bordered by Zimbabwe (with rich ore deposits traceable between the two regions); southern Ontario and Quebec were bordered by northern Europe; and northern Quebec and Labrador were linked to southern Greenland. Mining and oil companies are providing 1.25 million dollars for a new, 5-year, industry-government-university project (www.supercontinent.org) with the expectation of gaining a competitive advantage in the search for new resources. This is a unique global collaboration which links 40+ researchers around the world. It provides Canadian graduate students the opportunity to participate in a major global project to "complete the plate tectonic revolution" and to develop a powerful exploration tool for the mining and oil industries of Canada.