什么是 Craton？

A craton is an old and stable core of a continent: continental crust formed and deformed more than a billion years ago, which has since cooled and no longer deforms. Its rocks are mostly metamorphic and plutonic rocks, the deep roots of former mountains.

A craton is a part of a continent that has stayed tectonically stable for more than a billion years: a core of Archean or Proterozoic crust, metamorphic and plutonic, sitting on a thick, cold and buoyant root of lithospheric mantle that reaches some $250\,\mathrm{km}$ deep.