Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

The Pilbara Craton

The Pilbara Craton in its final stage consisted of a number of granite batholiths that became welded together, first by collisions and later by addition of granite intrusions that helped weld the batholiths into 1 massive, solid craton. The oldest of these batholiths has been found to have formed at about 3.5 - 3.4  billion years ago. This makes it the second oldest of the cratons that were jammed together to form the beginnings of the Australian continent. 

The Pilbara region lies on the tropic of Capricorn.

Precambrian Research Volume 135, Issue 4, Pages 245-360 (15 December 2004)
The First Billion Years - Selected Papers Presented at the 13th V.M. Goldschmidt Conference, Kurashiki, Japan
Edited by S.J. Mojzsis

Geochemistry of Precambrian carbonate intercalated in pillows and its host basalt: implications for the REE composition of circa 3.4 Ga seawater  • ARTICLE
Pages 331-344
Koshi Yamamoto, Nobukazu Itoh, Takuya Matsumoto, Tsuyoshi Tanaka and Mamoru Adachi

Links

1. Geochronology and stratigraphic relationships of the Sulphur Springs Group and Strelley Granite: a temporally distinct igneous province in the Archaean Pilbara Craton, Australia
2. Extensional structures during deposition of the 3460 Ma Warrawoona Group in the eastern Pilbara Craton, Western Australia
3. Geology and tectonic evolution of the Palaeoproterozoic Bryah, Padbury and Yerrida Basins (formerly Glengarry Basin), Western Australia: implications for the history of the south-central Capricorn Orogen
4. ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar laserprobe ages of metamorphic hornblendes from the Coongan Belt, Pilbara, Western Australia
5. The Building Blocks of a Continent
6. Tectonic Evolution of Proterozoic Australia
7. Muccan Batholith, eastern Pilbara, Western Australia
8. Review of the Pilbara Craton and Fortescue Basin, Western Australia:
   Crustal evolution providing environments for early life