Pre-Rodinia supercontinent Nuna shaping up: A global synthesis with new paleomagnetic results from North China

Abstract

The existence of a pre-Rodinia Precambrian supercontinent, variously called Nuna or Columbia, has been widely speculated in the past decade, but the precise timing of its existence and its configuration have been uncertain due to the lack of unequivocal paleomagnetic and geological constraints. Here we report high-quality paleomagnetic results from the well dated ∼1780Ma Xiong'er Group in southern North China Block (NCB). A total of 110 paleomagnetic samples from 14 sites were collected and subjected to stepwise thermal demagnetization. After removing a low temperature component (CL) of viscous magnetic remanence acquired in recent geomagnetic field, a high temperature component (CH), carried by hematite and magnetite in redbeds and volcanic samples, has been isolated. It gives a mean direction of (D=18.4°, I=−3.7°, α95=7.6°, N=14) after bedding correction, and a corresponding paleomagnetic pole at 50.2°N, 263.0°E (A95=4.5°). The CH passed a reversal test and was interpreted as a primary remanence. This new pole plus three other high-quality poles from the NCB that have been more precisely dated at 1769±3Ma, 1560–1440Ma and 1437±21Ma define a 1780–1440Ma apparent polar wander path (APWP) for the NCB. This, together with an update of global high quality paleomagnetic dataset, allows us to demonstrate that the pre-Rodinia supercontinent Nuna likely existed at least between ∼1780Ma and ∼1400Ma. Our paleomagnetism-based global reconstruction, for the first time, quantitatively assembles all major cratons together; it encompasses previously proposed regional links including the SAMBA connection between Baltica, Amazonia and Western Africa (Johansson, 2009), connections between Laurentia, Baltica and Siberia at the core of Nuna (Evans and Mitchell, 2011), the proto-SWEAT connection between Laurentia, East Antarctica and Australian blocks (Payne et al., 2009), and the NCB–India connection (Zhao et al., 2011).