The Deep-Earth Origins of the Great Unconformity

The supplied source is a bibliography of 99 studies and resources concerning the Great Unconformity, a major gap in the geological record. The references cover competing explanations for its formation, including Neoproterozoic glacial erosion, tectonic uplift, sea-level change, mantle flow and dynamic topography. They also document research on the Grand Canyon, the Canadian Shield, North China, Scandinavia, Australia, Africa and other regions, as well as the geological datasets and computational tools used to investigate Earth’s deep history.

Research on the Great Unconformity

1. Keller, C. B. et al. “Neoproterozoic glacial origin of the Great Unconformity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 116, 1136–1145 (2019). Article
2. Peters, S. E. & Gaines, R. R. “Formation of the ‘Great Unconformity’ as a trigger for the Cambrian explosion.” Nature 484, 363–366 (2012). Article
3. McDannell, K. T. & Keller, C. B. “Cryogenian glacial erosion of the central Canadian Shield: the ‘late’ Great Unconformity on thin ice.” Geology 50, 1336–1340 (2022). Article
4. McDannell, K. T., Keller, C. B., Guenthner, W. R., Zeitler, P. K. & Shuster, D. L. “Thermochronologic constraints on the origin of the Great Unconformity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 119, e2118682119 (2022). Article
5. Sturrock, C. P., Flowers, R. M. & Macdonald, F. A. “The late Great Unconformity of the central Canadian Shield.” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 22, e2020GC009567 (2021). Article
6. Peak, B. A., Flowers, R. M. & Macdonald, F. A. “Ediacaran-Ordovician tectonic and geodynamic drivers of Great Unconformity exhumation on the southern Canadian Shield.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 619, 118334 (2023). Article
7. Flowers, R. M., Macdonald, F. A., Siddoway, C. S. & Havranek, R. “Diachronous development of Great Unconformities before Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 117, 10172–10180 (2020). Article
8. Sun, Y. et al. “Global sea-level fall triggered Ediacaran–Cambrian unconformity in North China craton.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 622, 118411 (2023). Article
9. Tasistro-Hart, A. R. & Macdonald, F. A. “Phanerozoic flooding of North America and the Great Unconformity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 120, e2309084120 (2023). Article
10. DeLucia, M. S., Guenthner, W. R., Marshak, S., Thomson, S. N. & Ault, A. K. “Thermochronology links denudation of the Great Unconformity surface to the supercontinent cycle and snowball Earth.” Geology 46, 167–170 (2018). Article
11. Burgess, P. M., Gurnis, M. & Moresi, L. “Formation of sequences in the cratonic interior of North America by interaction between mantle, eustatic, and stratigraphic processes.” Geological Society of America Bulletin 109, 1515–1535 (1997). Article
12. Flament, N., Gurnis, M. & Müller, R. D. “A review of observations and models of dynamic topography.” Lithosphere 5, 189–210 (2013). Article
13. Wilner, J. A. et al. “Limits to timescale dependence in erosion rates: quantifying glacial and fluvial erosion across timescales.” Science Advances 10, eadr2009 (2024). Article
14. Ronov, A. B., Khain, V. E., Balukhovsky, A. N. & Seslavinsky, K. B. “Quantitative analysis of Phanerozoic sedimentation.” Sedimentary Geology 25, 311–325 (1980). Article
15. Karlstrom, K. E. & Timmons, J. M. In Grand Canyon Geology: Two Billion Years of Earth’s History, edited by Timmons, J. M. & Karlstrom, K. E., Special Paper 489, 73–79 (Geological Society of America, 2012).
16. Dutton, C. E. Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, with Atlas. Monograph 2 (US Government Printing Office, 1882).
17. Powell, J. W., Thompson, A. H., Coues, E. & Goode, G. B. Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries: Explored in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872, Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Monograph (US Government Printing Office, 1875).
18. Peak, B. A., Flowers, R. M., Macdonald, F. A. & Cottle, J. M. “Zircon (U-Th)/He thermochronology reveals pre-Great Unconformity paleotopography in the Grand Canyon region, USA.” Geology 49, 1462–1466 (2021). Article
19. Valverde-Vaquero, P. et al. “U–Pb single-grain dating of detrital zircon in the Cambrian of central Poland: implications for Gondwana versus Baltica provenance studies.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 184, 225–240 (2000). Article
20. Kukkonen, I. T. et al. “Phanerozoic evolution of Fennoscandia: evidence from apatite fission track, fluid flow and geodynamic data in Finland and Estonia.” Gondwana Research 146, 74–92 (2025). Article
21. Grendaitė, M., Michelevičius, D. & Radzevičius, S. “Insights into the structural geology and sedimentary succession of the Baltic Basin, Western Lithuania.” Marine and Petroleum Geology 147, 106009 (2023). Article
22. Hall, A. M. et al. The Sub-Cambrian Unconformity in Västergötland, Sweden: Reference Surface for Pleistocene Glacial Erosion of Basement (Svensk Kärnbränslehantering, 2019).
23. Nielsen, A. T. & Schovsbo, N. H. “Cambrian to basal Ordovician lithostratigraphy in southern Scandinavia.” Bulletin of the Geological Society of Denmark 53, 47–92 (2006). Article
24. Murrell, G. R. & Andriessen, P. A. M. “Unravelling a long-term multi-event thermal record in the cratonic interior of southern Finland through apatite fission track thermochronology.” Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C 29, 695–706 (2004). Article
25. Sun, Y. et al. “Detrital zircon geochronology and stratigraphy of the Proterozoic strata in the Olongbuluke terrane of Northwest China: implications for the Great Unconformity.” Precambrian Research 376, 106684 (2022). Article
26. Lee, J.-H. et al. “The Great Unconformity in the eastern Sino-Korean Block: a synthesis of Taebaek Group stratigraphy, fault controls, and global correlations.” Earth-Science Reviews 270, 105244 (2025). Article
27. Li, M. et al. “A window into the Great Unconformity: insights from geochemistry and geochronology of Ediacaran glaciogenic rocks in the North China Craton.” Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 194, 104327 (2020). Article
28. Wan, B. et al. “Repositioning the Great Unconformity at the southeastern margin of the North China Craton.” Precambrian Research 324, 1–17 (2019). Article
29. Spasojevic, S. & Gurnis, M. “Sea level and vertical motion of continents from dynamic Earth models since the Late Cretaceous.” AAPG Bulletin 96, 2037–2064 (2012). Article
30. Flament, N. “Present-day dynamic topography and lower-mantle structure from palaeogeographically constrained mantle flow models.” Geophysical Journal International 216, 2158–2182 (2019). Article
31. Braun, J., Robert, X. & Simon-Labric, T. “Eroding dynamic topography.” Geophysical Research Letters 40, 1494–1499 (2013). Article
32. Cucchiaro, A., Flament, N., Arnould, M. & Cressie, N. “Large volcanic eruptions are mostly sourced above mobile basal mantle structures.” Communications Earth & Environment 6, 538 (2025). Article
33. Flament, N., Bodur, Ö. F., Williams, S. E. & Merdith, A. S. “Assembly of the basal mantle structure beneath Africa.” Nature 603, 846–851 (2022). Article
34. Hager, B. H. & Clayton, R. W. “Constraints on the structure of mantle convection using seismic observations, flow models, and the geoid.” In Mantle Convection: Plate Tectonics and Global Dynamics, edited by Peltier, W. R., 657–763 (Gordon and Breach, 1989).
35. Colli, L., Ghelichkhan, S. & Bunge, H.-P. “On the ratio of dynamic topography and gravity anomalies in a dynamic Earth.” Geophysical Research Letters 43, 2510–2516 (2016). Article
36. Downey, N. J. & Gurnis, M. “Instantaneous dynamics of the cratonic Congo basin.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 144, B06401 (2009). Article
37. Davies, D. R. et al. “Earth’s multi-scale topographic response to global mantle flow.” Nature Geoscience 12, 845–850 (2019). Article
38. Cao, X., Flament, N., Bodur, Ö. F. & Müller, R. D. “The evolution of basal mantle structure in response to supercontinent aggregation and dispersal.” Scientific Reports 11, 22967 (2021). Article
39. Müller, R. D. et al. “A tectonic-rules-based mantle reference frame since 1 billion years ago – implications for supercontinent cycles and plate–mantle system evolution.” Solid Earth 13, 1127–1159 (2022). Article
40. Frolov, S. V. et al. “Meso-Neoproterozoic petroleum systems of the Eastern Siberian sedimentary basins.” Precambrian Research 259, 95–113 (2015). Article
41. Delvaux, D., Maddaloni, F., Tesauro, M. & Braitenberg, C. “The Congo Basin: stratigraphy and subsurface structure defined by regional seismic reflection, refraction and well data.” Global and Planetary Change 198, 103407 (2021). Article
42. Kalsbeek, F. & Frei, R. “Geochemistry of Precambrian sedimentary rocks used to solve stratigraphical problems: an example from the Neoproterozoic Volta basin, Ghana.” Precambrian Research 176, 65–76 (2010). Article
43. Nielsen, A. T. & Schovsbo, N. H. “The regressive Early-Mid Cambrian ‘Hawke Bay Event’ in Baltoscandia: epeirogenic uplift in concert with eustasy.” Earth-Science Reviews 151, 288–350 (2015). Article
44. Morón, S. et al. “Denuding a craton: thermochronology record of Phanerozoic unroofing from the Pilbara craton, Australia.” Tectonics 39, e2019TC005988 (2020). Article
45. Kohn, B. P. et al. “Shaping the Australian crust over the last 300 million years: insights from fission track thermotectonic imaging and denudation studies of key terranes.” Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 49, 697–717 (2002). Article
46. Flowers, R. M. & Schoene, B. “U-Th)/He thermochronometry constraints on unroofing of the eastern Kaapvaal craton and significance for uplift of the southern African Plateau.” Geology 38, 827–830 (2010). Article
47. Fonseca, A., Nachtergaele, S., Bonilla, A., Dewaele, S. & De Grave, J. “Extensional exhumation of cratons: insights from the Early Cretaceous Rio Negro–Juruena belt (Amazonian Craton, Colombia).” Solid Earth 15, 329–352 (2024). Article
48. Japsen, P., Green, P. F. & Bonow, J. M. “Ups and downs of the Guiana Shield and Amazon Basin over the last 500 Myr.” Gondwana Research 148, 415–444 (2025). Article
49. Salles, T., Husson, L., Lorcery, M. & Hadler Boggiani, B. “Landscape dynamics and the Phanerozoic diversification of the biosphere.” Nature 624, 115–121 (2023). Article
50. Karlstrom, K. E. et al. “Formation of the Grand Canyon 5 to 6 million years ago through integration of older palaeocanyons.” Nature Geoscience 7, 239–244 (2014). Article
51. Liu, L. et al. “The role of oceanic plateau subduction in the Laramide orogeny.” Nature Geoscience 3, 353–357 (2010). Article
52. Wu, F.-Y., Yang, J.-H., Xu, Y.-G., Wilde, S. A. & Walker, R. J. “Destruction of the North China Craton in the Mesozoic.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 47, 173–195 (2019). Article
53. Ault, A. K., Flowers, R. M. & Bowring, S. A. “Phanerozoic surface history of the Slave craton.” Tectonics 32, 1066–1083 (2013). Article
54. Shahkarami, S., Buatois, L. A., Mángano, M. G., Hagadorn, J. W. & Almond, J. “The Ediacaran–Cambrian boundary: evaluating stratigraphic completeness and the Great Unconformity.” Precambrian Research 345, 105721 (2020). Article
55. Peters, S. E., Husson, J. M. & Czaplewski, J. “Macrostrat: a platform for geological data integration and deep-time Earth crust research.” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 19, 1393–1409 (2018). Article
56. Condie, K. C., Pisarevsky, S. A. & Puetz, S. J. “LIPs, orogens and supercontinents: the ongoing saga.” Gondwana Research 96, 105–121 (2021). Article
57. Zhong, S., McNamara, A., Tan, E., Moresi, L. & Gurnis, M. “A benchmark study on mantle convection in a 3-D spherical shell using CitcomS.” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 9, Q10017 (2008). Article
58. Frasson, T., Labrosse, S., Nataf, H.-C., Coltice, N. & Flament, N. “On the impact of true polar wander on heat flux patterns at the core–mantle boundary.” Solid Earth 15, 617–637 (2024). Article
59. Young, A. et al. “Long-term Phanerozoic sea level change from solid Earth processes.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 584, 117451 (2022). Article
60. Weber, J. & Flament, N. “Factors contributing to slab locations and geometries in reconstructions of past mantle flow.” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 25, e2023GC011313 (2024). Article
61. Bower, D. J., Gurnis, M. & Flament, N. “Assimilating lithosphere and slab history in 4-D Earth models.” Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 238, 8–22 (2015). Article
62. Merdith, A. S. et al. “Extending full-plate tectonic models into deep time: linking the Neoproterozoic and the Phanerozoic.” Earth-Science Reviews 214, 103477 (2021). Article
63. Gurnis, M. et al. “Plate tectonic reconstructions with continuously closing plates.” Computers & Geosciences 38, 35–42 (2012). Article
64. Chopelas, A. & Boehler, R. “Thermal expansivity in the lower mantle.” Geophysical Research Letters 19, 1983–1986 (1992). Article
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69. Hassan, R., Flament, N., Gurnis, M., Bower, D. J. & Müller, D. “Provenance of plumes in global convection models.” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 16, 1465–1489 (2015). Article
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