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
Granite melts which are less dense than mafic rocks and thus tend to ascend toward the surface. In contrast, mafic rocks, either basalts or gabbros, once metamorphosed at eclogite facies, tend to sink into the mantle beneath the Moho. Granitoids have crystallized from felsic magmas that have compositions at or near a eutectic point (or a temperature minimum on a cotectic curve). Magmas are composed of melts and minerals in variable abundances. Traditionally, magmatic minerals are crystallized from the melts that have completely separated from their parental rocks and thus are highly evolved because of igneous differentiation. If a granite has