Geology of the Northwest Territories province from dikes and mafic lava flows, overlain by deep ocean turbidite deposits. These rocks are believed to be the remains of oceanic crust that ended up preserved, surrounded on all sides by felsic volcanic rocks and granitoid plutons. In the area of Snofleld Lake in the northern part of the Slave Province, the remains of Archean stromatolites are preserved in a dolomite unit between felsic volcanic and greywacke-mudstone turbidites, some of the earliest evidence of life, forming in the shallows around volcanic islands. Around 1.27 billion years ago in the Proterozoic, a series of major magmatic events affected the
Oceanic plateau and oceanic crust, although they are more mafic than felsic. However, when a plate carrying oceanic crust subducts under a plate carrying an igneous oceanic plateau, the volcanism which erupts on the plateau as the oceanic crust heats up on its descent into the mantle erupts material which is more felsic than the material which makes up the plateau. This represents a step toward creating crust which is increasingly continental in character, being less dense and more buoyant. If an igneous oceanic plateau is subducted underneath another one, or under existing continental crust, the eruptions produced thereby produce material that