Inclination shallowing study of the Early-Neoproterozoic Liantuo Formation in South China and its paleogeographic implications

New dating data indicate that the Liantuo Formation ended at 715Ma, and hence the constraint of the paleolatitude of the Liantuo Formation will shed a light on the "Snowball Earth" theory. Researchers have obtained reliable paleomagnetic results from the Liantuo Formation, but the inclination shallowing has not been considered by them. In this paper, the authors obtained a corrected parameter by conducting a remnant anisotropy research on Liantuo Formation. The inclination shallowing in Liantuo Formation is 2.6°, which results in a latitude difference of 3.9°±6°. The reconstruction of the South China and Australia block at 720Ma shows the diamictite distribution from middle latitude to tropical region, which proves the "Snowball Earth" theory.