The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

2. Archean provinces history A.. Watery early world The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters . (Genesis 1:2 ESV). For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God (2 Peter 3:5 ESV). The Earth’s continental crust appears to be unique compared with crusts on other planets and satellites in the solar system, as a result of the Earth’s abundant free water (Taylor and McLennan 1995). “Water is essential for the formation of granites, and granite, in turn, is essential for the formation of stable continents. The Earth is the only planet with granite and continents because it is the only planet with abundant water.”  (Campbell and Taylor 1983). It has been claimed that for the major part of the Earth’s fluid history, fluid transport was mostly one way, from the outer core to the surface and that the rifting of continents during orogenic events delivered mantle water to the surface (Santosh et al. 2010). Before Day Three there is no mention of land, but there is mention of the “deep” or ocean, so one can infer that there was a global ocean which from space appeared to be without topographic relief and empty (Dickens and Snelling 2008). The description of water on Day One (in the beginning) is proposed to relate to the role of water in the Archean. The Spirit of God hovering upon the waters (Genesis 1:2b) may imply shaking or vibrating, with convection cells operating in the waters and in the hot crustal rocks below. There may have been submarine volcanic mountains and turbidite facies associated with submarine fans, but no shelf deposits (Dickens and Snelling 2008). The Archean is said to have had a permobile tectonic regime whereby there were no stable areas (Burke et al. 1976). This is believed to relate to the idea of convective dissipation of heat generated in the early Earth (Burke et al. 1976). It has been inferred that water was important for early Archean granitoid (tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorite)(TTG) petrology, with hydrous basaltic melts as parental liquids, undergoing extensive fractional crystallisation (Hamilton 2003; Kleinhanns et al. 2003). Indeed, there is evidence for granitoid formation processes in the presence of liquid water oceans on the early Earth (Iizuka et al. 2007). The high water content of parental melts may explain the highly calcic composition only found in megacrystic anorthosites of the Archean (Ashwal 2010). The occurrence of sedimentary rocks and pillow lavas (products of submarine eruption) in the Isua greenstone belt of southwestern Greenland indicates that water basins existed in the early Archean (Sharkov and Bogatikov 2010). Archean banded iron formations have been interpreted as formed in deep water below wave base (Pirajno 1992). The minimal development of Archean carbonates and quartz arenites in North America implies a lack of stable shelf areas (Okajangas 1985). From the observation that most Archean continental flood basalts were emplaced on flooded continents, a theory was proposed for the hypsometry of the early Earth showing that most Archean continental crust was flooded and the Earth was largely a water world. (Rey et al. 2013). B. Tectonism Most models for the generation of new continental crust involve differentiation of basalt, by fractional crystallization to higher silica compositions (Hawkesworth et al. 2010). In other words, melting of mafic rock may produce a surface crust composed mainly of less dense, more buoyant rocks of granitoid composition. Crust formation is related to heat generation (stern et al. 2007). Thus there are believed to be links between granite magmatism, high-grade metamorphic events and crustal growth (Hawkesworth et al. 2010). The formation, rise, and emplacement of granitoids via dikes may only take days and so millions of years are not necessary (Snelling 2008). The paleomagnetic record provides evidence that the Precambrian continental crust was essentially intact from the Archean to the Neoproterozoic (Piper 2015). Mints (2018) has written an alternative to the model of supercontinent cycles. This involves growth of an Archean to Neoproterozoic supercontinent during, and as a result of, high-temperature events accompanied by granulite-facies metamorphism. For most terranes other than the Archean, crustal deformation is restricted to narrow belts (Frazier and Schwimmer 1987). In contrast, Archean terranes have intense deformation over their entire area. This indicates that rigid lithospheric plates, at least as known today, may not have existed in the early Earth and that modern-style plate tectonic processes may not have been involved. Archean tectonism may have been dominantly intracontinental deformation as the hotter crust would have been far too weak and mobile to behave as rigid plates (Hamilton 2003, Hamilton 2007). Thus with high heat flow, the Kenoran Event would have had tectonism and magmatism, but not necessarily orogeny since the hotter crust may have been too weak to support high mountains. The Archean may only have had subdued topography (< ca. 2000 m) (Rey et al. 2013). It has been claimed that bedrock mapping and associated geochronology of the Superior Province provides evidence that microcontinental fragments and juvenile oceanic terranes were amalgamated into a composite Superior superterrane in a series of orogenic events at ca. 2.7 Ga (Percival et al. 2004). However, an alternative interpretation to the amalgamation idea, based on the paleomagnetic record, is that the Precambrian continental crust was essentially intact from the Archean to the Neoproterozoic (Piper 2015). This interpretation is more consistent with the idea of the progressive growth of only one supercontinent from Day One to the first part of Day Three. There is no indication of numerous supercontinent cycles in the Bible. The Kenoran Event or so-called “orogeny” was defined on the basis of ca. 2.5 Ga K-Ar ages from provinces including the Superior, Slave and Nain Provinces (Stockwell 1964). The Kenoran Event is associated with simultaneous tectonism in North American Archean provinces. The Kenoran Event has been described as the last important period of widespread folding, metamorphism and intrusion in the Canadian Shield, with the Superior Province chosen as the type region (Stockwell et al. 1970). The late Archean age peak is thought to represent coincidental cooling within individual provinces (Percival 2004) and the beginning of stable Dickens ◀ North American Precambrian geology ▶ 2018 ICC 394