Neoproterozoic gneisses at Meatiq and Hafafit in the Eastern Desert of Egypt give Rb–Sr and U–Pb zircon ages of 600–750 Ma. These gneisses are interpreted by different workers to represent deeper levels of juvenile Neoproterozoic crust or Archaean/Palaeoproterozoic crust that was remobilized during Neoproterozoic time. Geochemical and Sr–Nd isotope compositions for these gneisses reported here ...

Geologic investigations of the Arabian-Nubian Shield (ANS) are supported by a valuable, expanding dataset of geochronologic ages and isotopic analyses. U-Pb zircon SIMS, TIMS, and evaporation data provide robust temporal control on depositional, volcanic, and intrusive events. Nd, Sr, O and, increasingly, Hf isotopic studies provide insights into magma sources and constraints on crustal recycli...

The increase in trace fossil diversity across the Neoproterozoic-Cambrian boundary often is presented in terms of tabulations of ichnogenera. However, a clearer picture of the increase in diversity and complexity can be reached by combining trace fossils into broad groups defined both on morphology and interpretation. This also focuses attention on looking for similarites between Neoproterozoic...

Earth's surface chemical environment has evolved from an early anoxic condition to the oxic state we have today. Transitional between an earlier Proterozoic world with widespread deep-water anoxia and a Phanerozoic world with large oxygen-utilizing animals, the Neoproterozoic Era [1000 to 542 million years ago (Ma)] plays a key role in this history. The details of Neoproterozoic Earth surface o...

The Neoproterozoic glacial intervals represent one of the most curious expressions of Earth’s climate. Despite the popularity of the hard “Snowball” hypothesis in the popular press, the scientific community remains divided over the extent of the Neoproterozoic glaciations, the age of the glaciations, the number of glacial events and the triggering mechanism for the glaciations. A major, and yet...

The Sturtian and Marinoan snowball Earth episodes initiated 720 and 650 million years ago, respectively, are among the most dramatic events in Earth’s history. The ultimate causes of these events remain obscure, however, and there is still uncertainty about the critical levels of greenhouse gas concentrations at which the snowball transition occurs. Furthermore, earlier modelling results (with ...

South China has been considered as part of the Rodinian supercontinent during Neoproterozoic time, although its paleogeographic position within this supercontinent is still a matter of debate. The Wangjiangshan and Bijigou complexes along the northern margin of South China are among the largest mafic intrusions in China. New SHRIMP zircon U-Pb results indicate that these two intrusions have cry...

The Hellefjord Schist, a volcaniclastic psammite-pelite formation in the Caledonides of Arctic Norway contains discoidal impressions and apparent tube casts that share morphological and taphonomic similarities to Neoproterozoic stem-holdfast forms. U-Pb zircon geochronology on the host metasediment indicates it was deposited between 437 ± 2 and 439 ± 3 Ma, but also indicates that an inferred ba...

The East African Orogen (EAO) is one of Earth’s great collision zones, where East and West Gondwana collided to form the supercontinent ‘Greater Gondwana’ or ‘Pannotia’ at the end of Neoproterozoic time. There is now sufficient Nd isotopic data for basement rocks of the EAO to yield a useful summary. A total of 449 samples were gleaned from the literature, recalculated to a common value for the...

The Neoproterozoic era was arguably the most revolutionary in Earth history. Extending from 1000 to 541 million years ago, it stands at the intersection of the two great tracts of evolutionary time: on the one side, some three billion years of pervasively microbial 'Precambrian' life, and on the other the modern 'Phanerozoic' biosphere with its extraordinary diversity of large multicellular org...