Craton
part of the continental lithosphere
In geology, a craton ( KRAYT-on, KRAT-on, or KRAY-tən; from Ancient Greek κράτος (kratos) 'strength') is an old and stable part of continental lithosphere (the Earth's two topmost layers, the crust and the lithospheric mantle). Having often survived cycles of merging and rifting of continents, cratons are generally found in the interiors of tectonic plates; the exceptions occur where geologically recent rifting events have separated cratons and created passive margins along their edges. Cratons are composed of ancient crystalline basement rocks covered by younger sedimentary rocks. They have a thick crust and deep lithospheric roots extending several hundred kilometres into Earth's mantle. This crust consists of shields and platforms. Shields are made of basement rock and are visible, while platforms are the portion not visible made up of sedimentary rock.
Cratons contain the oldest continental crust rocks on Earth. They were formed in the Archaean (4 to 2.5 billion years ago) and the Proterozoic (2.5 billion- 538.8 million year ago) geologic eons. Most were formed in the Archaean.
Terminology
The term craton is used to distinguish the stable portion of the continental crust from regions that are more geologically active and unstable.
The public source identifies “Craton” as part of the continental lithosphere. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Craton, part and continental.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q191110. The Library of Congress control number is sh85033780. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Craton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.