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How was the Canadian Shield formed for kids?
This Precambrian igneous rock is in a vast mass called the Canadian Shield. It was dry land ages ago when the oceans still rolled over the sites of the Appalachian and the Rocky mountains. It was uplifted to form a plateau and then carved by stream erosion. Finally glaciers scraped it almost level.
How old is the Canadian Shield?
The age of these rocks is in all cases greater than 540 million years, and radiometric age dating has revealed some that are as old as 2 to 3 billion years.
Where does the Canadian Shield start?
Canada's largest geographical feature, it stretches east to Labrador, south to Kingston on Lake Ontario and northwest as far as the Arctic Ocean. The Shield is considered to be the nucleus of the North American continent and is made up of roots of ancient mountains.
What is the Canadian Shield made out of?
As the exposed part of the North American puzzle piece, the Canadian shield is made of hard rock, both igneous (formed by the rapid cooling of liquid rock) and metamorphic (rock that has been changed by enormous heat and pressure). It is covered with relatively thin layers of soil, gravel, etc.
How was Canadian Shield created?
It took 3 billion years for the Canadian Shield to be formed. Its formation was the result of several forces. Different parts of the Earth continued to collide together. This is called plate tectonics.
Is the Canadian Shield the oldest landform?
In addition to being the largest physiographic region in Canada, the Canadian Shield is also the oldest. It is composed of crystalline Precambrian rocks formed during several phases of mountain building between 4 billion and 1 billion years ago.
What is the Canadian Shield known for?
Lakes and Reservoirs of North America The Canadian Shield is the ancient core of the North American Continent. It is composed mainly of highly metamorphosed granite, with smaller areas of metamorphosed sedimentary and igneous rocks and some areas of relatively horizontal but still quite ancient sedimentary rocks.
What is the Canadian Shield and where is it located?
OntarioCanadian Shield / Province
What is the Canadian Shield for kids?
The Canadian Shield is also called the Laurentian Plateau, or Bouclier canadien (French). It is a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks (geological shield). It is the ancient geological core of the North American continent (the North American Craton or Laurentia).
How thick is the Canadian Shield?
The sedimentary cover is less than a mile thick on the platform, but it increases to about 2.5 miles (4 km) in the Hudson Bay, Michigan, Williston, and Illinois sedimentary basins and to 4 miles (6 km) and more in troughs adjacent to the peripheral orogenic belts.
Does the Canadian Shield have gold?
Even though it has very rich hard-rock gold deposits, the Canadian Shield has almost no significant placer gold deposits. The Shield was scoured clean of most weathered, eroded rocks, and, pre- sumably, associated placer gold deposits by the last ice age.
What is the Canadian Shield simple definition?
Canadian Shield in British English noun. Also called: Laurentian Shield, Laurentian Plateau. (in Canada) the wide area of Precambrian rock extending west from the Labrador coast to the basin of the Mackenzie and north from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay and the Arctic: rich in minerals.
When was the Canadian Shield formed era?
The Canadian Shield is part of an ancient continent called Arctica, which was formed about 2.5 billion years ago.
Is the Canadian Shield the oldest part of North America?
The oldest known materials are 4.4-billion-year-old zircons from Western Australia. The Canadian Shield is the original core, or craton, of the North American continent.
How old is the Canadian coat of arms?
Red and white became Canada's official colours as a result of the proclamation of the Canada Coat of Arms by King George V in 1921. However, the history of the official colours dates back to the First Crusade in the 11th century.
How was the Canadian Shield named?
The shield is part of the North American craton, which is a piece of the earth's crust that contains most of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The Canadian shield gets its name from its shape, which resembles an ancient shield, raised and ready to defend North America.
What is the Canadian shield?
The Canadian Shield is a physiographic division comprising four smaller physiographic provinces: the Laurentian Upland, Kazan Region, Davis and James. The shield extends into the United States as the Adirondack Mountains (connected by the Frontenac Axis) and the Superior Upland. The Canadian Shield is a U-shaped subsection of the Laurentia craton signifying the area of greatest glacial impact (scraping down to bare rock) creating the thin soils. The Canadian Shield is more than 3.96 billion years old. The Canadian Shield once had jagged peaks, higher than any of today's mountains, but millions of years of erosion have changed these mountains to rolling hills.
Why is the Canadian shield so dense?
This arrangement was caused by severe glaciation during the ice age, which covered the Shield and scraped the rock clean. The lowlands of the Canadian Shield have a very dense soil that is not suitable for forestation; it also contains many marshes and bogs ( muskegs ).
What is the shield landscape in Ontario?
Typical shield landscape in a southern Ontario region with very few old growth trees, due to a history of logging and fires. Black River, Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park.
What are the richest minerals in the Canadian shield?
The Canadian Shield is one of the world's richest areas in terms of mineral ores. It is filled with substantial deposits of nickel, gold, silver, and copper. Throughout the Shield there are many mining towns extracting these minerals. The largest, and one of the best known, is Sudbury, Ontario. Sudbury is an exception to the normal process of forming minerals in the Shield since the Sudbury Basin is an ancient meteorite impact crater. Ejecta from the meteorite impact was found in the Rove Formation in May 2007. The nearby but less-known Temagami Magnetic Anomaly has striking similarities to the Sudbury Basin. This suggests it could be a second metal-rich impact crater.
Where are the mountains in Canada?
Although these mountains are now heavily eroded, many large mountains still exist in Canada's far north called the Arctic Cordillera. This is a vast, deeply dissected mountain range, stretching from northernmost Ellesmere Island to the northernmost tip of Labrador. The range's highest peak is Nunavut's Barbeau Peak at 2,616 metres (8,583 ft) above sea level. Precambrian rock is the major component of the bedrock.
How Was the Canadian Shield Formed?
It took 3 billion years for the Canadian Shield to be formed. Its formation was the result of several forces. Different parts of the Earth continued to collide together. This is called plate tectonics . At the same time the earth eroded. Then the earth was transformed by huge glaciers during different Ice Ages. At one time, the Canadian Shield was a huge mountain range. Geologists, the people who study the earth, have called this the Grenville Mountain Range. These mountains were as tall as the Himalaya Mountains are today. The mountains of the Canadian Shield were eroded. Erosion happens when wind and rain wear down rocks, land, and earth. The Canadian Shield continues to be changed by environmental forces every day.
What is the Canadian shield?
The Canadian Shield is a huge rock formation. The rock, or crust, is also known as the North American Craton. The Craton stretches from Greenland to Mexico. The Canadian Shield makes up about 50 per cent of Canada. The Canadian Shield stretches from Labrador to the Arctic. It covers parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It covers much of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. It is 5 million km 2. The shield contains many natural resources, including many minerals. Not many people live directly on the Canadian Shield. It is too rocky and the land is not good for farming.
What are the animals that live in the Canadian Shield?
Many different types of animals live on the Canadian Shield. Some animals that live there are wolves, lynx , moose, black bears, beavers and caribou. The bird population includes Canada geese, American black ducks , blue jays, great horned owls and white-throated sparrows . Trout, burbot and northern pike are some fish that can be found in the lakes and rivers of the Canadian Shield.
What are the Indigenous peoples of Canada?
Indigenous peoples have lived on the Canadian Shield for thousands of years. Innu traditional territory includes what is now Quebec and Labrador. The traditional territory of the Cree , Anishinaabeg and Métis includes the regions of Quebec, Ontario , Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta . Dene and Inuit traditional territory includes the more northern regions of the Canadian Shield. Most European settlers did not attempt to live on the Shield because of its barren soil. The Euro-Canadian population on the Canadian Shield has remained small. Canadian industries, however, have retained a great interest in the region. It is a mineral-rich area. ( See also Human Settlement in Canada; Human Geography and Canada .)
What is the Canadian shield made of?
The Canadian Shield constitutes the largest mass of exposed Precambrian rock on the face of Earth. The region, as a whole, is composed of ancient crystalline rocks whose complex structure attests to a long history of uplift and depression, mountain building ( orogeny ), and erosion. Some of the ancient mountain ranges can still be recognized as a ridge or belt of hills, but the present appearance of the physical landscape of the Canadian Shield is not so much a result of the folding and faulting and compression of the rocks millions of years ago as it is the work of ice in relatively recent geologic time. During the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), the vast continental glaciers that covered northern North America had this region as a centre. The ice, in moving to the south, scraped the land bare of its overlying mantle of weathered rock. Some of this material was deposited on the shield when the ice melted, but the bulk of it was carried southward to be deposited south and southwest of the Canadian Shield.
What is the largest rock in Canada?
By far the largest of Canada’s physiographic regions, the Canadian Shield (sometimes called the Precambrian Shield) occupies... The Canadian Shield constitutes the largest mass of exposed Precambrian rock on the face of Earth.
What epoch was North America in?
During the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), the vast continental glaciers that covered northern North America had this region as a centre. The ice, in moving to the south, scraped the land bare of its overlying mantle of weathered rock.
How long ago was the Canadian shield formed?
The Canadian shield is one of the oldest geological features in Canada. Like the Alleghenies to the south, it was formed well over 1 billion years ago and was originally a very tall mountain range - higher than the Himalayas are now. However, they have worn down tremendously in the meantime and there is no longer any "uplift" to drive the land higher.
What was left of the 19th century?
As such, in the 19th century, what was left was largely a wasteland with little so il, dotted by occasional lakes and swamps. It was, for the most part, a no-man's land. Even the First Nations left it largely unsettled.
Is the Canadian shield granite?
No, it is granite. Not much use for planting crops at all. Whatever soil is on the Canadian Shield is shallow and generally quite acidic because the majority of trees which grow on the shield are fir trees.
Did Sudbury have gold?
However, it did allow geologists working out of a railway junction in a place called "Sudbury" to take a closer look at the rocks. Yes there was gold and copper, but most importantly, there were huge quantities of nickle. The Sudbury area eventually accounted for 85% of the world's nickle and still accounts for more than half.
Overview
Geology
The Canadian Shield is among the oldest on Earth, with regions dating from 2.5 to 4.2 billion years. The multitude of rivers and lakes in the region is classical example of a deranged drainage system, caused by the watersheds of the area being disturbed by glaciation and the effect of post-glacial rebound. The Shield was originally an area of very large, very tall mountains (about 12,000 m or 39,0…
Geographical extent
The Canadian Shield is a physiographic division comprising four smaller physiographic provinces: the Laurentian Upland, Kazan Region, Davis and James. The shield extends into the United States as the Adirondack Mountains (connected by the Frontenac Axis) and the Superior Upland. The Canadian Shield is a U-shaped subsection of the Laurentia craton signifying the area of greatest
Ecology
The current surface expression of the Shield is one of very thin soil lying on top of the bedrock, with many bare outcrops. This arrangement was caused by severe glaciation during the ice age, which covered the Shield and scraped the rock clean.
The lowlands of the Canadian Shield have a very dense soil that is not suitabl…
Mining and economics
The Canadian Shield is one of the world's richest areas in terms of mineral ores. It is filled with substantial deposits of nickel, gold, silver, and copper. Throughout the Shield there are many mining towns extracting these minerals. The largest, and one of the best known, is Sudbury, Ontario. Sudbury is an exception to the normal process of forming minerals in the Shield since the Sudbury Basin is an ancient meteorite impact crater. Ejecta from the meteorite impact was found in the Rov…
See also
• Athabasca Basin
• Geology of Ontario
• Platform (geology)
• Oldest rock
• Basement (geology)
How Was The Canadian Shield formed?
- It took 3 billion years for the Canadian Shield to be formed. Its formation was the result of several forces. Different parts of the Earth continued to collide together. This is called plate tectonics. At the same time the earth eroded. Then the earth was transformed by huge glaciers during different Ice Ages. At one time, the Canadian Shield was a...
Physical Features and Resources
- Erosion and glaciers have made much of the Canadian Shield smooth. The Canadian Shield is not all the same though. Geologists have divided it into seven different regions or provinces. The names of these provinces are: Nain, Grenville, Southern, Superior, Churchill, Slave and Bear. Nickel and copper are found in the Southern Province, especially in the Sudbury, Ontario area. The Supe…
Wildlife
- Many different types of animals live on the Canadian Shield. Some animals that live there are wolves, lynx, moose, black bears, beavers and caribou. The bird population includes Canada geese, American black ducks, blue jays, great horned owls and white-throated sparrows. Trout, burbot and northern pikeare some fish that can be found in the lakes and rivers of the Canadian …
Human Population on The Canadian Shield
- Indigenous peoples have lived on the Canadian Shield for thousands of years. Innu traditional territory includes what is now Quebec and Labrador. The traditional territory of the Cree, Anishinaabeg and Métis includes the regions of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Dene and Inuit traditional territory includes the more northern regions of the Canadian S…