Abstract
Many, if not all, of the long-term fluctuations in geological processes operating on Earth’s surface are tectonically driven and related to the interplay of plate tectonics and deep mantle dynamics resulting in supercontinental cycles and (super)plume events (Condie et al. 2001; Condie 2004). These processes include the amalgamation, dispersal, collision and geographic position of major land-masses which dictate volcanic and hydrothermal activities, changes in sea level and the global patterns of ocean circulation, thermal isolation of continents, climate change, rate of continental weathering and its influence on seawater composition, and atmospheric oxygen budget via control of burial and recycling of carbon and sulphur. Further, all of these are reflected in biological processes. However, well-documented and well-constrained examples of this conceptual model have been developed and tested largely on Phanerozoic rocks (Valentine and Moores 1970; Fischer 1984; Marshall et al. 1988; Hardebeck and Anderson 1996; Berner 2006; Rampino 2010). Although there have been a number of attempts to apply such concepts to “Deep Time”, in particular, the Palaeoproterozoic (Nance et al. 1986; Windley 1993; Lindsay and Brasier 2002; Condie et al. 2009), testing and verification of the models is challenging. The existence of continental masses, their palaeogeography and sizes in the late Archaean-early Palaeoproterozoic remain hypothetical and robust plate reconstructions are hampered by the small number of reliable palaeomagnetic data (Evans and Pisarevsky 2008).
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Melezhik, V.A., Kump, L.R., Hanski, E.J., Fallick, A.E., Prave, A.R. (2013). 1.1 Tectonic Evolution and Major Global Earth-Surface Palaeoenvironmental Events in the Palaeoproterozoic. In: Melezhik, V., et al. Reading the Archive of Earth’s Oxygenation. Frontiers in Earth Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29682-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29682-6_1
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