Rodinia

Not to be confused with Rhodinia, a genus of moth.
For the genus of metalmark butterflies, see Rodinia (butterfly).

Rodinia (from the Russian родина, rodina, meaning "motherland, birthplace"[1][2][3]) was a Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.26–0.90 billion years ago (Ga)[4] and broke up 750–633 million years ago (Ma).[5] Valentine & Moores 1970 were probably the first to recognise a Precambrian supercontinent, which they named "Pangaea I."[5] It was renamed "Rodinia" by McMenamin & McMenamin 1990, who also were the first to produce a plate reconstruction and propose a temporal framework for the supercontinent.[6]

Rodinia formed at c. 1.23 Ga by accretion and collision of fragments produced by breakup of an older supercontinent, Columbia, assembled by global-scale 2.0–1.8 Ga collisional events.[7] Rodinia broke up in the Neoproterozoic, with its continental fragments reassembled to form Pannotia 633–573 Ma. In contrast with Pannotia, little is known about Rodinia's configuration and geodynamic history. Paleomagnetic evidence provides some clues to the paleolatitude of individual pieces of the Earth's crust, but not to their longitude, which geologists have pieced together by comparing similar geologic features, often now widely dispersed.

The extreme cooling of the global climate around 717–635 Ma (the so-called Snowball Earth of the Cryogenian period) and the rapid evolution of primitive life during the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian periods are thought to have been triggered by the breaking up of Rodinia or to a slowing down of tectonic processes.[8]

  1. ^ McMenamin & McMenamin 1990, chapter: The Rifting of Rodinia
  2. ^ Redfern 2001, p. 335
  3. ^ Taube, Aleksandr M., R. S. Daglish (1993) 'Russko-angliiskii Slovar' =: Russian-English Dictionary. Moscow: Russkii iazyk ISBN 5-200-01883-8
  4. ^ Kee, Weon-Seo; Kim, Sung Won; Kwon, Sanghoon; Santosh, M.; Ko, Kyoungtae; Jeong, Youn-Joong (1 December 2019). "Early Neoproterozoic (ca. 913–895 Ma) arc magmatism along the central–western Korean Peninsula: Implications for the amalgamation of Rodinia supercontinent". Precambrian Research. 335. Bibcode:2019PreR..33505498K. doi:10.1016/j.precamres.2019.105498. S2CID 210298156. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  5. ^ a b Li et al. 2008
  6. ^ Meert 2012, Supercontinents in Earth history, p. 998
  7. ^ Zhao et al. 2002; Zhao et al. 2004
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Piper was invoked but never defined (see the help page).