Review of Paleoproterozoic tectonics in the southern West African Craton: Insights from multi-disciplinary data integration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
For over a century, research has focused on the southern West African Craton (sWAC), aiming to unravel its lithological, geochemical, geochronological, structural, metamorphic, and metallogenic record. Yet, the late Siderian to early Rhyacian (c. 2350–2265 Ma) geodynamic setting of the sWAC remains poorly constrained due to (i) the unresolved configuration of adjacent Archean blocks; (ii) limited geochronological data for the lowermost stratigraphic units; and (iii) extensive overprinting by subsequent magmatic, tectonic, and thermal events. Using a multidisciplinary data integration approach, it is however possible to conduct the analysis of tectonic processes governing the emplacement of the Paleoproterozoic granite-greenstone belts of West Africa. In this review, we integrate all available published datasets and knowledge to provide new insights on the late Siderian to Rhyacian tectonic evolution of the sWAC. This data compilation is presented and discussed in the form of key time slices (c. 2350–2265 Ma, 2265–2200 Ma, 2200–2135 Ma, 2135–2120 Ma, 2120–2095 Ma and 2095–2060 Ma), which mark evolutionary stages in the geological history of the region. The results of our analysis support the shift from enigmatic Archean tectonic modes to plate tectonics, with the onset of subduction at c. 2265 Ma. However, critical knowledge gaps remain, particularly regarding the tectonic significance of greenstone belts and the role of the West African Craton in potential configurations of the Eburnean–Transamazonian Orogen during the assembly of Nuna. To address these issues, future research directions are proposed to conclude this synthesis.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.011 | 0.017 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".