Category Archives: Archean

Lots of oxygen on the Archean Earth?

New evidence for the early evolution of photosynthesis: was the early Earth really as oxygen-free as we think it was?
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Categories: Archean, geochemistry, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, rocks & minerals

Geopuzzle #12 (finally) revisited

The answer? I dunno…
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Categories: Archean, geology, geopuzzling, past worlds

What’s up with those Archean sandstones?

In addition to searching out evidence for Archean microbial mats, my revisitation of the Pongola sandstones gave me the chance to look a bit more closely at their lithology. When I last posted pictures from this sequence, there was a … Continue reading

Categories: Archean, fieldwork, geology, geopuzzling, past worlds

Archean bacterial mats under the hammer

Geovandalism rears it’s ugly head once more.
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Categories: Archean, fieldwork, fossils, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, ranting

Sadly, not sandworms

The answer to Friday’s geopuzzler
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Categories: Archean, fossils, geology, past worlds, Proterozoic

How the air we breathe became breathable

What geology tells us about the evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Categories: Archean, geochemistry, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, Proterozoic

Where the Moon was at, 3.2 billion years ago

It may not look particularly cosmic, but the rock below not only tells us that the Moon was present back in the Archean, but also that it was orbiting the Earth at a much closer distance than it is today.

Categories: Archean, geology, paper reviews, past worlds

What is a greenstone belt?

The Barberton greenstone belt – one of the oldest bits of crust on the planet
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Categories: Archean, fieldwork, geology, past worlds