Cratons are the oldest regions of the Earth with generally undeformed crust since the Paleoproterozoic (Lee et al., 2011). They form the interior shield of continents with very little topography and are surrounded by mobile belts that are successively younger toward the continental margins. Most of the cratons are underlain by thick (150-250 km), cold and buoyant lithosphere composed of depleted mantle with 20%-30% melt removed. Partial melting and melt extraction in the Earth's upper mantle can significantly modify the composition and therefore the geophysical properties of the solid residues (Afonso & Schutt, 2012). The highly depleted rocks can be significantly less dense and generally seismically faster than their fertile counterparts. The cratonic lithosphere is generally characterized by high shear wave velocity (>4.6 km/s), low surface heat flow (<40 ± 11 mW/m 2 ) and lower density due to the presence of highly melt-depleted peridotites abundant in forsterite-rich olivine
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