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)再次扩大规模，以满足日益增长的需求。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战略，以发现更深层次的隐伏矿藏。对于加拿大及其采矿和石油勘探公司来说，知道世界上还有哪些大陆区块在过去的地质时代曾与加拿大大陆(或其组成部分)毗邻，这将是一个重大的优势。这样的信息将使富含重要经济矿物的地带能够从地球上其他以前邻近但现在远离地球的地区追踪到加拿大。直到最近几年，这个长期寻求的重建过去大陆的目标才变得触手可及。随着放射性时钟在回收和分析稀有矿物小颗粒方面的改进，科学家现在有可能通过病毒精确测定所有持续时间短、体积大的火山事件，即所谓的大火成岩省(LIP)，并将这些事件的组成部分与碎裂大陆的各个部分进行关联。在概念验证测试中，我们的研究团队发现，大约在27亿到20亿年前：魁北克东部可能与津巴布韦接壤(这两个地区之间有丰富的矿藏可追溯)；安大略省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南部相连。矿业和石油公司将为一个新的、为期5年的行业-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。这是一次独特的全球合作，将世界各地的40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的全球项目的机会，该项目旨在“完成板块构造革命”，并为加拿大的采矿和石油行业开发一种强大的勘探工具。

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.