ABSTRACT The 7–9-km-thick North Shore Volcanic Group (NSVG) constitutes the volcanic products of the 1.1 Ga Midcontinent Rift System in northeastern Minnesota. With close physical, chemical, and volcanological analogies to Tertiary-to-modern Iceland, these flows accumulated in a gradually subsiding basin over a mantle plume centered beneath modern Lake Superior between 1108 and 1094 Ma. They are essentially undeformed, except for local faulting and disruption associated with hypabyssal intrusions. Geochemically the NSVG is bimodal, dominated by basalts and rhyolites, but includes a complete tholeiitic Fe-enrichment suite that ranges from primitive olivine tholeiite through transitional basalt, basaltic andesite, andesite, and icelandite to rhyolite. The mafic magmas were partial melts of the plume and lithospheric mantle, variably modified by crystal fractionation in crustal chambers and by crustal interaction. Many, but not all, of the rhyolites were derived largely from partial melting of Archean crust. The volcanic rocks were erupted subaerially, primarily from fissures, though there is some evidence for central volcanoes. Some of the rhyolites are very large and widespread, and were emplaced as high-temperature lavas and rheoignimbrites that crystallized primary tridymite. During their accumulation and subsidence, these plateau volcanics were subjected to burial/hydrothermal metamorphism, resulting in secondary mineral associations that range from greenschist (epidote-chlorite-albite±actinolite) to zeolite (thomsonite-scolecite-smectite) facies. This field trip will allow participants to examine outcrops throughout the stratigraphic section of the NSVG, including structural relations, volcanology, geochemical diversity, burial metamorphism, and associated hypabyssal intrusions.

ABSTRACT This field trip examines a sequence of ejecta and deformed substrate resulting from the 1850 Ma meteorite impact. An impact origin for the Sudbury structure in Ontario has long been accepted, but knowledge of the corresponding ejecta was limited to fall-back breccia in the relict crater at Sudbury. The more distant ejecta blanket was discovered only recently near Thunder Bay, Ontario, and later in other parts of the Lake Superior region. Known informally as the Sudbury impact layer (SIL), it occurs at and near the stratigraphic top of Paleoproterozoic iron-formation. The impact-related deposits in the western Lake Superior region include (1) autochthonous material interpreted to be seismically folded and shattered iron-formation and carbonate rocks (breccia), overlain by (2) strata composed largely of allochtho-nous material (ejecta) derived in part from target rocks, and (3) irregular layers that appear to be mixtures of locally and distally derived material. Definitive microscopic evidence of an impact origin includes the occurrence of accretionary lapilli, ash pellets, spherules, devitrified glass, and quartz fragments marked by planar deformation features. The SIL exhibits extreme lithologic variability from place to place within each exposure area and between exposure areas. Nevertheless, the stratigraphic relationships that are presented by these exposures can be used to devise a sequence of deformation and depositional events that is largely consistent with experimental and empirical evidence of impact processes. This field trip will demonstrate that the stratigraphic arrangement of facies in the SIL has important temporal implications for understanding mechanisms of ejecta delivery and deposition.