The Huronian Supergroup is a Proterozoic assemblage of geologic formations of the Superior craton of the Canadian Shield in

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

and

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. It extends from west of the city of Sault Ste. Marie in the west to the Ontario-Quebec border to the east and is part of the Southern Geologic Province. Stratigraphy The Huronian Supergroup consists of four Groups. All the rocks are low grade metamorphic sedimentary rocks or igneous rocks. The four geologic groups that make up the Huronian are the Elliot Lake Group, Hough Lake Group, Quirke Lake Group, and the Cobalt Group (from oldest to youngest). Major glacial periods,

Huronian glaciation The Huronian glaciation (or Makganyene glaciation) was a period where several ice ages occurred during the deposition of the Huronian Supergroup, rather than a single continuous event as it is commonly misrepresented to be. The deposition of th ...

, occurred at the beginning of the Hough Lake, Quirke Lake and Cobalt. Age The bulk of the Huronian Group consists of mostly metamorphosed sandstones and mudstones. Since there are no index fossils, the sedimentary rocks cannot be dated using fossils, like they can in Phanerozoic rocks. However, the base contains volcanics that have been dated at about 2.480 billion years ago (Gya). The top of the Huronian and cross cutting all of the units within are the

Nipissing sills The Nipissing sills, also called the Nipissing diabase, is a large 2217– to 2210–million year old group of sills in the Superior craton of the Canadian Shield in Ontario, Canada, which intrude the Huronian Supergroup. Nipissing sills intrude ...

which date to 2.2185 Gya. The age at which the Huronian sediments were deposited is between 2.480 Gya and 2.219 Gya.

References

Geology of Ontario Geology of Quebec {{Canada-geologic-formation-stub

See also

References