{"id":1697,"date":"2014-05-25T16:34:15","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T21:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=1697"},"modified":"2014-05-25T18:35:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-25T23:35:07","slug":"ancient-canadian-rocks-shed-light-on-first-continents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/ancient-canadian-rocks-shed-light-on-first-continents\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Canadian rocks shed light on first continents<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1671\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Reimink.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1671\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1671\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Reimink.jpg\" alt=\"By examining 4 billion-year-old rocks from the Northwest Territories, scientists have reconstructed the processes that led to the formation of the first continents. (Photo credit: Ron Reimink)\" width=\"400\" height=\"289\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Reimink.jpg 400w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Reimink-300x216.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1671\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">By examining 4 billion-year-old rocks from the Northwest Territories, scientists have reconstructed the processes that led to the formation of the first continents. (Photo credit: Ron Reimink)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A new analysis of some very old rocks from the Northwest Territories sheds light on how the very first continents formed. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Rocks that make up the continental crust are less dense than those in oceanic crust, and today formed mainly in subduction zones, where oceanic crust and water get forced downward under overlapping tectonic plates. But analysis of some of the oldest continental crust in existence &#8211; 4 billion-year-old rocks found north of Yellowknife &#8211; shows that they more closely resemble those found in Iceland, where water trickling through a submerged volcano interacts with magma to make less dense minerals that allowed the first continents to poke up through the sea.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/ngeo\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/ngeo2170.html\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the the journal\u00a0<em>Nature Geoscience\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>May 25, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/easweb.eas.ualberta.ca\/page\/directory\/?person=Chact\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Chacko<\/a>, University of Alberta, Alberta<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/easweb.eas.ualberta.ca\/page\/directory\/?person=reimj\" target=\"_blank\">Jesse Reimink<\/a>, University of Alberta, Alberta<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new analysis of some very old rocks from the Northwest Territories sheds light on how the very first continents formed. Rocks that make up the continental crust are less dense than those in oceanic crust, and today formed mainly in subduction zones, where oceanic crust and water get forced downward under overlapping tectonic plates. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[180,31,215,1457],"class_list":["post-1697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-alberta","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-geology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Reimink.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-rn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1697"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1711,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions\/1711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}