Goldilocks at the dawn of complex life: mountains might have damaged Ediacaran-Cambrian ecosystems and prompted an early Cambrian greenhouse world.

We combine U-Pb in-situ carbonate dating, elemental and isotope constraints to calibrate the synergy of integrated mountain-basin evolution in western Gondwana. We show that deposition of the Bambuí Group coincides with closure of the Goiás-Pharusian (630-600 Ma) and Adamastor (585-530 Ma) oceans. Metazoans thrived for a brief moment of balanced redox and nutrient conditions.

Decratonization by rifting enables orogenic reworking and transcurrent dispersal of old terranes in NE Brazil.

Dispersion and deformation of cratonic fragments within orogens require weakening of the craton margins in a process of decratonization. The orogenic Borborema Province, in NE Brazil, is one of several Brasiliano/Pan-African late Neoproterozoic orogens that led to the amalgamation of Gondwana. A common feature of these orogens is that a period of extension and opening of narrow oceans preceded inversion and collision.