The “Supercontinents” constitute the majority of the ancient Earth’s surface and play an important role in Earth’s history (Meert 2012). Supercontinent defined as a large, solid, homogeneous massif of the Earth’s crust, which contains nearly all the continental crust of the planet. It is believed that the largest part of the continental crust formed in the period of 3,200–2,500 million years (Ma) and its fragments are included in all the modern continents (Lubnina and Slabunov 2011).

The Arabian–Nubian Shield (ANS) is a vast and exceptionally well-preserved expanse of crust and underlying sub-continental lithospheric mantle that was largely produced during the Neoproterozoic, with only restricted contribution from older lithospheric components, except in the extreme north-eastern part of the shield. With an exposed area of nearly 2 million km², and an additional 1 million km² buried beneath the great Cenozoic East African Rift System and its associated volcanic rocks, the shield represents one of the best-preserved Neoproterozoic orogenic belts on the planet and the largest preserved expanse of new Neoproterozoic lithosphere in Earth’s geological history.