Brazil Eco Adventure Tours
Rainforest - Hiking & Biking - Wildlife

The São Francisco craton in eastern Brazil forms the core area of the so - called Atlantic Shield and together with two other major cratons, Amazonas (A) and Rio de la Plata (RP), it nowadays sustains the South American Platform.

At the end of the Brasiliano - Pan African orogenic cycle in the late Neoproterozoic / early Paleozoic (500 Ma) when the protoypes of South America and Africa were united in one single landmass, constituting the western part of supercontinent Gondwana, São Francisco was part of a larger craton called São Francisco - Congo (SFC).

With the South America - Africa break - up, associated with the rupture of supercontinent Pangea during the Mesozoic (250 - 65 Ma), also the São Francisco - Congo craton broke into two pieces. Towards the end of the Cretaceous (90 Ma), the South Atlantic opened and one fragment (São Francisco) drifted with South America to the west and the other one (Congo) with Africa to the east.

The Arquean basement is exposed in the southern and northeastern part of the craton. Paleo- to Mesoarquean blocks, probably fragments of ancient supercontinent Atlântica, were welded together with Paleoproterozoic terranes during the Transamzonian orogenic cycle (2,1 - 1,9 Ga).

In the southern part, the so-called Mineiro Belt is attached to the metamoprphic complexes of Minas Gerais (Bomfim, Belo Horizonte and Campo Belo) and in the northeastern part, the Gavião (3,4 - 3,2 Ga), Jequié (3,0 - 2,9 Ga) and Serrinha (3,0 - 2,9 Ga) blocks are connected by the Itabuna - Salvador - Curaçá and Contendas - Mirante belts. The Contendas Mirante greenstone belts of the Gavião Block, belong to the oldest rocks reported in South America.