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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

In the course of billions of years continents break up, drift apart, and are pushed back together again. The cores of continents are, however, geologically extremely stable and have survived up to 3.8 billions of years. These cores that are called cratons are the oldest known geological features of our planet. It was assumed that the cratons are stable because of their especially solid structure due to relatively low temperatures compared to the surrounding mantle.

A team of German-American scientists now discovered that these cratons that were assumed to be "as solid as a rock" are not that solid after all [sciencedaily.com]. The team leading by Dr. Mikhail Kaban from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences now discovered that the craton below the North American continent is extremely deformed: its root is shifted relative to the center of the craton by 850 kilometers towards the west-southwest.

The Canadian Shield [wikipedia.org] is a visible section of the North American craton. That region is rich in mineral ores, particularly nickel, gold, silver, and copper. The portion in the Northwest Territories is the sixth largest source of diamonds in the world.

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