The large igneous province extends from the Arctic in Nunavut to near the Great Lakes in Northwestern Ontario where it meets with the smaller Matachewan dike swarm.

As the head of the Mackenzie plume encountered the Earth's lithosphere, it spread out and melted catastrophically to form large volumes of basaltic magma.

[3] However, if subhorizontal flow is a result of dike ascent to a level of impartial lightness in the Earth's crust, it would not be related to the size of the Mackenzie plume.

[3] Uranium-lead dating of certain Mackenzie dikes from an array of distances from an assigned focal point give an age of 1267 ± 2 million years.

[3] Both hotspots produced massive qualities of basaltic lava flows that were identical with the formation of dike swarms during a short period of time at the beginning of mantle plume volcanism.

[3] However, the younger and smaller Franklin Large Igneous Province just to the northeast is considered to have been formed by a similar mantle plume between 727 and 721 million years ago.

[3] The short time span of two million years for magma emplacement in the Mackenzie Large Igneous Province is also present for the Yellowstone hotspot.

[3] Fahrig (1987) proposed that the Mackenzie plume impact resulted in the emplacement of a triple junction that had a large mafic dike swarm on every rift arm.

[3] A slightly younger but possibly related geologic feature is the 2,000 km (1,200 mi) long Midcontinent Rift System adjacent to the southern end of the Mackenzie Large Igneous Province.

[1] Weathering of the Muskox dipping sequence has exposed a cross-section through the entire dipping sequence, starting with the Coppermine flood basalts in the north above the roof of the magma chamber, down through the igneous layering of the Muskox intrusion and into the keel region of the intrusion and its intersection with the olivine gabbro feeder dike that forms the southernmost sector.

[10] Medium to fine grained diorite and gabbro comprise the Bear River dikes and are occasionally altered by metamorphism to form greenschist.

The early Muskox intrusion is considered to have originally been a sill-shaped magma reservoir for the overlying Coppermine River flood basalts during their formation.

[1] With the Coppermine River basalts comprising more than 100 individual lava flows, the potential volumes of silicate magma that moved through the Muskox conduit were in the order of 10,000 km3 (2,400 cu mi).

[1] Further to the northeast, the Nauyat Formation flood basalts on northwestern Baffin Island of Nunavut were erupted on a smaller scale about 900 million years ago.

[1] Research operated by Muskox Minerals Corp. proclaims that this extensive layered intrusion has the possibility to evolve into a massive expected source of copper, nickel and platinum group metals.

The first mineral exploration of the Muskox intrusion occurred during the 1950s when surface prospecting began by the International Nickel Company of Canada, which is now known as Vale Inco.

[1] In the 1980s, many small companies with little financing and fragmented claim blocks attended sampling and a number of drilling operations on outcroppings of the Muskox intrusion that contained platinum group elements.

[1] Exposed portions of the feeder dike south of the Coppermine River comprise bodies of large semi-massive and disseminated copper-nickel sulfides rich in platinum group metals.

[1] At the margins of the Muskox intrusion, sulfide bearing zones more than 10 km (6.2 mi) long contain palladium, platinum, gold, copper and nickel.