Geology and economic minerals of Canada. Part B (chapters VIII-XIII and index) / Геология и экономика полезных ископаемых Канады

Western Canada is the part of Canada that lies west of the Precambrian rocks of the Canadian Shield. It includes the geological regions known as the Interior Platform, the Cordilleran Orogen, and parts of the Pacific and Arctic Continental Shelves and Coastal Plains (Fig. VIII-1).
The Interior Platform, underlain by Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks, is the northwestern part of the North American craton, the stable interior region of the continent. The nearly horizontal bedrock is covered by a thick mantle of glacial drift to form the plains and plateaux of the Interior Plains physiographical province. It is a region of grassland, forest, and tundra, 775,000 square miles in extent, that embraces parts of the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, the northeast corner of British Columbia, and much of western District of Mackenzie, Northwest Territories. The southern part is composed of a relatively thick blanket of Mesozoic and Tertiary clastic rocks that overlie carbonates and evaporites of Paleozoic age, with most systemsrepresented. They rest on a basement of Precambrian crystalline rocks. The region has been extensively drilled and the geology is well known. The northern part, however, is less well known and partly unknown; few wells penetrate the entire Phanerozoic succession. Devonian and older elastics, carbonates, and evaporites lie on Precambrian sedimentary and crystalline rocks and are covered by a thin veneer of late Lower Cretaceous rocks. Other systems are either unrepresented or are present only near Cordilleran Geosyncline and Arctic Continental Shelf. Interior Platform is linked to the St. Lawrence Platform of Southeastern Canada through the central United States of America and merges with Arctic Platform in the north, beyond the mainland. <...>