Yilgarn Craton

"Yilgarn" redirects here. For other uses, see Yilgarn (disambiguation).

Basic geological regions of Australia, by age. The large brown region in the lower left of the continent constitutes the Yilgarn Craton.

The Yilgarn Craton is a large craton that constitutes a major part of the Western Australian land mass. It is bounded by a mixture of sedimentary basins and Proterozoic fold and thrust belts. Zircon grains in the Jack Hills, Narryer Terrane have been dated at ~4.27 Ga, with one detrital zircon dated as old as 4.4 Ga.[1]

The Murchison Province of the craton contains the Yarrabubba impact structure, at over 2 billion years old it is the oldest dated meteorite impact crater.[2]

  1. ^ Earlier known as Yilgarn Block Geological Survey of Western Australia (1975), The Geology of Western Australia, Western Australia Geological Survey, ISBN 978-0-7244-6084-7, section Yilgarn Block by I. R. Williams page 33–81.
  2. ^ Erickson, Timmons M.; Kirkland, Christopher L.; Timms, Nicholas E.; Cavosie, Aaron J.; Davison, Thomas M. (21 January 2020). "Precise radiometric age establishes Yarrabubba, Western Australia, as Earth's oldest recognised meteorite impact structure". Nature Communications. 11 (1): 300. Bibcode:2020NatCo..11..300E. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13985-7. PMC 6974607. PMID 31964860.