Relating to or characteristic of a craton; stable and ancient in geological terms, with minimal deformation over extremely long time periods.
From craton + -ic (suffix forming adjectives). This geological term describes the properties and behavior of ancient, stable crustal blocks.
The cratonic interiors of continents are so stable that they're used as the 'baseboards' for measuring how much Earth's crust deforms elsewhere—they're geology's reference frame.
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