Barberton Greenstone Belt
The Kaapvaal Craton (centred on Limpopo Province in South Africa), along with the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia, are the only remaining areas of pristine 3.6–2.5 Ga (billion years ago) crust on Earth. Similarities of rock records from both these cratons, especially of the overlying late Archean sequences, suggest that they were once part of the Vaalbara supercontinent (Zegers et al., 1998).
The Kaapvaal Craton covers an area of approximately 1,200,000 km2 (460,000 sq mi) and is joined to the Zimbabwe Craton to the north by the Limpopo Belt. To the south and west, the Kaapvaal Craton is flanked by Proterozoic orogens, and to the east by the Lebombo monocline that contains Jurassic igneous rocks associated with the break-up of Gondwana.
The Kaapvaal Craton formed and stabilised between 3.7 and 2.6 Ga by the emplacement of major granitoid batholiths that thickened and stabilised the continental crust during the early stages of an arc-related magmatism and sedimentation cycle. The craton is a mixture of early Archean (3.0–3.5 Ga) granite greenstone terranes and older tonalitic gneisses (ca. 3.6–3.7 Ga), intruded by a variety of granitic plutons (3.3–3.0 Ga). Subsequent evolution of the Kaapvaal Craton (3.0–2.7 Ga) is thought to be associated with continent–arc collision that caused an overlaying succession of basins filled with thick sequences of both volcanic and sedimentary rocks. This was then followed by episodic extension and rifting when the Gaborone–Kanye and Ventersdorp sequences were developed. Early Archean crust is well exposed only on the east side of the craton and comprises a collage of subdomains and crustal blocks characterised by distinctive igneous rocks and deformations.
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