Unraveling one billion years of geological evolution of the southeastern Amazonia Craton from detrital zircon analyses

Abstract Despite representing one of the largest cratons on Earth, the early geological evolution of the Amazonia Craton remains poorly known due to relatively poor exposure and because younger metamorphic and tectonic events have obscured initial information. In this study, we investigated the sedimentary archives of the Carajas Basin to unravel the early geological evolution of the southeastern Amazonia Craton. The Carajas Basin contains sedimentary rocks that were deposited throughout a long period spanning more than one billion years from the Mesoarchean to the Paleoproterozoic. The oldest archives preserved in this basin consist of a few ca. 3.6 Ga detrital zircon grains showing that the geological roots of the Amazonia Craton were already formed by the Eoarchean. During the Paleoarchean or the early Mesoarchean (