Arctica

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Arctica or Arctida is a hypothetical ancient continent which formed approximately 2.565 billion years ago in the Neoarchean era. It was made of Archaean cratons, including the Siberian Craton, with its Anabar/Aldan shields in Siberia, and the Slave, Wyoming, Superior, and North Atlantic cratons in North America. Arctica was named by Rogers 1996 because the Arctic Ocean formed by the separation of the North American and Siberian cratons. Russian geologists writing in English call the continent "Arctida" since it was given that name in 1987, alternatively the Hyperborean craton, in reference to the hyperboreans in Greek mythology. Nikolay Shatsky (Shatsky 1935) was the first to assume that the crust in the Arctic region was of continental origin. Shatsky, however, was a "fixist" and, erroneously, explained the presence of Precambrian and Paleozoic metamorphic rocks on the New Siberian, Wrangel, and De Long Islands with subduction. "Mobilists", on the other hand, also erroneously, proposed that North America had rifted from Eurasia and that the Arctic basins had opened behind a retreating Alaska.