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

随着金融危机的消退，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被发现，需要新的工具来提高勘探策略，以发现更多隐藏更深的矿床。对于加拿大及其矿业和石油勘探公司来说，了解世界上哪些其他大陆块在过去的地质时代曾经与加拿大大陆（或其组成部分）相邻，将是一个重大的优势。这样的信息将使富含经济上重要的矿物的带能够从地球上其他以前毗邻但现在遥远的地区追踪到加拿大。只是在最近几年，这个长期追求的重建过去大陆的目标才得以实现。随着放射性时钟在回收和分析稀有矿物小颗粒方面的进步，科学家们现在有可能精确地确定几乎所有短时间、大体积火山事件的日期，这些火山事件被称为大火成岩省（lip），并将这些事件的组成部分与破碎的大陆相关联。在概念验证测试中，我们的研究小组发现，大约27亿到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床）；安大略南部和魁北克与北欧接壤；魁北克北部和拉布拉多与格陵兰岛南部相连。矿业和石油公司为了在寻找新资源的过程中获得竞争优势，正在为一个新的为期5年的产学研合作项目（www.supercontinent.org）提供125万美元。这是一个独特的全球合作，将世界各地的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“完成板块构造革命”的重大全球项目的机会，并为加拿大的采矿和石油工业开发强大的勘探工具。

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.