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

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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.