Geological Survey of Canada, Current Research (Online) no. 2000-C2

Book excerpt: The Slave Province is a relatively small but well-exposed Archean craton in the north-west part of the Canadian Shield. Mapping of quartzite & banded iron formation occurrences throughout the Province since the 1970s has resulted in the conclusion that the overall topology of all greenstone belts in the central & western parts of the Province permits all such occurrences to be correlated into a single cover sequence, the Central Slave Cover Group. Following a brief historical overview, this paper presents field evidence for the discovery & successful correlation of that cover sequence across much of the craton. It then presents detrital zircon data to bolster this correlation, in particular to show that what was earlier mapped as a Paleoproterozoic cover sequence in central Wopmay Orogen is in fact part of the Central Slave Cover Group. The extension of the Cover Group into the north-western Slave Province have implications for the architecture & evolution of continental crust older than 2.85 billion years.