Cambrian to Early Silurian palaeomagnetic poles from the southern and northern parts of the Siberian Craton differ, but can be matched with an Euler pole of 60°N, 120°E and a rotation angle of 13°. We link this observation with Devonian rifting in the Viljuy Basin near the centre of the craton and also postulate that this rifting rejuvenated an older Precambrian rift zone, since 1–1.1 Ga poles from southern and northern Siberia differ as much as 23° around the same Euler pole. A revised Palaeozoic apparent polar wander (APW) path is presented for the Siberian Craton in which pre-Devonian poles are corrected for Viljuy Basin rifting. There is also much Late Devonian tectonic activity in the Altai–Sayan area, which may be linked. The APW path implies that Siberia was located at low southerly latitudes at the dawn of the Palaeozoic and slowly drifted northward (< 4 cm/yr.). A velocity burst is noted near the Ordovician–Silurian boundary (ca. 13 cm/yr between 450 and 440 Ma), whilst the Mid-Silurian and younger history is characterized by steady clockwise rotation (totalling about 75°) until the Late Permian. The Late Palaeozoic convergence history between Siberia and Baltica (Pangea) is hard to quantify from palaeomagnetic data because there are only two reliable poles (at 360 and 275 Ma) between the Early Silurian and the Permo-Triassic boundary. The Mid and Late Palaeozoic APW path for Siberia is therefore strongly interpolated and we discuss two different APW path alternatives that result in two very different convergence scenarios between Siberia and Baltica/Kazakh terranes.
There are a newly-constructed succession of palaeogeographic maps of Siberia and its nearby areas at various times from the Cambrian to the Permian as, firstly, the peri-Siberian terranes and, secondly, the remainder of the Central Asian terranes accreted to it. Prior to the Early Ordovician, Siberia was in the southern hemisphere, but after that it drifted northwards and for most of the Phanerozoic it has been one of the few larger terranes in the northern hemisphere. The Cambrian and Ordovician maps are provisional for the Altai–Sayan and Mongolian areas, whose geology is highly complex and whose detailed palaeogeography is unresolved. The terms “Altaids” and “Paleo-Asian Ocean” have been used in so many different ways by so many different authors over so many geological periods that we reject their use.
Wider issues considered include the possible links between the Cambrian Radiation (often wrongly termed “Explosion”), when metazoan animals first gained hard parts, and True Polar Wander (TPW). New Early Cambrian palaeomagnetic data from Siberia do not show rapid APW (< 10 cm/yr.) or dramatic velocity changes (< 4 cm/yr). It is concluded that the Cambrian Radiation occurred over a period approaching 20 Myr, and that rapid and large-scale TPW did not take place in the Cambrian. In addition, there are no traces of glaciogenic deposits in the very large area of Siberia during the Neoproterozoic, casting some doubt on the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis.