The Archean Earth

Tempos and Events

2nd Edition - November 1, 2024
Editors: Martin Homann, Wladyslaw Altermann, Richard R. Ernst, Christoph Heubeck, Timothy Lyons, Paul A. Mason, Rajat Mazumder, Dominic Papineau, Eva Stueeken, Aubrey Zerkle, Alex Webb
Language: English
Paperback ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 3 2 3 - 9 5 5 4 7 - 8
eBook ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 3 2 3 - 9 5 5 4 8 - 5

The Archean Earth: Tempos and Events, Second Edition is a process-based reference book focusing on the most important events on the early Earth, bringing together experts across Ea… Read more

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The Archean Earth: Tempos and Events, Second Edition is a process-based reference book focusing on the most important events on the early Earth, bringing together experts across Earth Sciences to give a comprehensive overview of the main events of the Archean Eon, as well as of the rates at which important geological and geobiological processes occurred in the same time interval. Over the last two decades, significant progress has been made in our understanding of the processes and events on the early Earth corresponding to advances in the analytical technologies and the continuing efforts of many colleagues that pursue their passion of unravelling the Archean rock record. The book addresses the origin of the Earth, succeeding impact events, and the evolution of the early Earth, covering topics such as Archean tectonics, volcanism, generation of continental crust, and the ongoing debate about the onset of plate tectonics; the evolution and models for Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere; the Archean atmosphere and chemical sedimentation; and sedimentation through Archean time; among others. Each topic is well-illustrated and includes a closing commentary at the end of each chapter, leading up to the final chapter which blends the major geological events and rates at which important processes occurred into a synthesis, postulating a number of "event clusters" in the Archean when significant changes occurred in many natural systems and geological environments.With updated processes, dating information, case studies, and more, The Archean Earth is a necessary addition to the library of any Earth science academics, students and researchers focused on the early Earth.

Section 1. FORMATION OF A HABITABLE PLANET

1.1. Introduction

1.2. Earth's Formation and First Billion Years

1.3. The Terrestrial Record of The Late Heavy Bombardment

1.4. Earth’s Oldest Rocks: A Brief Overview About the Distribution of Archean Greenstone Belts

1.5. Lessons from Other Planetary Bodies and Extra-Solar Planets

1.6. Summary

Section 2. ARCHEAN TECTONICS AND VOLCANISM

2.1. Introduction

2.2. Archean-Paleoproterozoic Superplume Events and Lips

2.3. Episodic Crustal Growth During Catastrophic Global-Scale Mantle Overturn Events

2.4. Onset of Plate Tectonics

2.5 Archean-Paleoproterozoic Continental Reconstructions

2.6. Archean Gold Mineralization

2.7. Komatiites: Volcanology, Geochemistry and Textures

2.8. Archean And Greenstone Belts: Setting and Evolution

2.9 Lessons from Planetary Volcanism

2.10. Summary

Section 3. GENERATION OF CONTINENTAL CRUST

3.1. Introduction

3.2. Komatiite: Implications for Mantle Composition and Geodynamic Processes

3.3. Emergence of Subaerial Crust and Onset of Weathering

3.4. Composition of Early Continental Crust

3.5. Granite Formation and Emplacement as Indicators of Archaean Tectonic Processes

3.6. Diapiric Processes in The Formation of Archaean Continental Crust

3.7. Early Archaean Crustal Collapse Structures and Sedimentary Basin Dynamics

3.8. Crustal Growth Rates

3.9. Summary

Section 4. ATMOSPHERIC EVOLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTS

4.1. Introduction

4.2. Archean Atmosphere, Hydrosphere and Biosphere Evolution: Insights from The Isotopic Record

4.3. The Sulphur Isotope Record of Evolving Atmospheric Oxygen

4.4. Banded Iron Formations

4.5. Archean Surface Environments

4.6. Archean Weathering and Climate

4.7. Summary

Section 5. EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND ARCHEAN GEOBIOLOGY

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Biogenicity Criteria

5.3. Evidence of Earth's Early Biosphere (Case Studies)

5.3.1. Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt

5.3.2. Pilbara Craton

5.3.3. Barberton Greenstone Belt

5.3.4. Insights into The Palaeoarchaean Record of The Singhbhum Craton, India

5.4. Organic Origin of Archean Carbonates: Insights from Modern Microbial Analogues

5.5. Origin and Evolution of Photosynthesis: A Molecular Biology Approach

5.6. Earth First Carbonate Platform

5.7. Occurrence and Biogenicity Of Archean Stromatolites and Microbial Mats

5.7. Evolution of Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles

5.8. Organic Geochemical Approaches to Understanding Early Life

5.9. The Paleoarchean Microfossil Record – A Critical Review

5.10. Evolving Life and Its Effect on Precambrian Sedimentation

5.10. Summary

Section 6. SEDIMENTATION THROUGH ARCHEAN TIME

6.1. Introduction

6.2. Sedimentary Structures: An Essential Key for Interpreting the Archean Rock Record

6.3. Archean Sedimentary Sequences

6.4. Precambrian Tidalites: Recognition and Significance

6.5 Sedimentary Dynamics of Precambrian Aeolianites & Archean Witnesses of Weather Phenomena

6.6. Archean Fluvial and Lacustrine Deposits

6.7. Microbial Mats in The Siliciclastic Rock Record: A Summary of Diagnostic Features

6.8. Sedimentation Rates

6.9. S

Section 7. TOWARDS A SYNTHESIS

Martin Homann

Dr. Homann obtained a MSc in Geology at Potsdam University, Germany, in 2010 and a PhD in Sedimentology and Geobiology from the Free University Berlin, Germany, in 2016. After three years of postdoctoral research at the University of Western Brittany, France, he is now a lecturer in Sedimentology at the University College London. His research is focused on the Archean biosphere, the environments in which microbial life was thriving and the morphological and geochemical traces it left behind in the sedimentary rock record.

Affiliations and expertise

University College London, UK

Wladyslaw Altermann

Affiliations and expertise

Ludwigs-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany

Richard R. Ernst

Richard R. Ernst is a Swiss physical chemist and Nobel Laureate. Ernst was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his contributions towards the development of Fourier transform Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy while at Varian Associates, Palo Alto and the subsequent development of multi-dimensional NMR techniques. Ernst served as faculty at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, from which he is now retired. Ernst also is credited with many inventions and held several patents in his field. In addition to Ernst’s Nobel prize, he is a foreign fellow of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences, was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1993, and was awarded the John Gamble Kirkwood Medal in 1989, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University in 1991, the Tadeus Reichstein Medal in 2000, and the Romanian National Medal in 2004. He holds Honorary Doctorates from the Technical University of Munich and University of Zurich. Ernst is member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board. Ernst is extremely interested and knowledgeable concerning Tibetan Buddhist art. He has studied non-destructive methods of learning the chemistry of the pigments that were using in their paintings.

Christoph Heubeck

Prof. Heubeck is a regional "soft-rock" geologist. Originally from Germany, he completed an MSc at the University of Texas at Austin on Tertiary basins on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, followed by a PhD from Stanford University on the Barberton Greenstone Belt of South Africa and Eswatini. He worked for six years as an explorationist and development geologist for Amoco and BP in the US and Canada before joining the Free University Berlin as a faculty member. There, he conducted studies on the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary in Kazakhstan and China and on Andean Tertiary basins in South America before taking up his interest in the Barberton Greenstone Belt again. In 2014, he moved to the FSU Jena where he holds the chair of General and Historical Geology. Most of his studies are field-based, range from the grain- to the basin-scale, and use - in collaboration with experts - whatever methods are necessary to address the problem at hand.

Affiliations and expertise

Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany

Timothy Lyons

Prof. Lyons is a Distinguished Professor of Biogeochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California-Riverside, and Director of the UCR Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center. Lyons currently leads the ‘Alternative Earths’ team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and within NASA’s Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research. He is also a co-leader of NASA’s Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments Research Coordination Network. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geochemical Society, the European Association of Geochemistry, and the American Geophysical Union. He has been honored with visiting professorships throughout the world. He holds a B.S. from the Colorado School of Mines, an M.S. from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. from Yale University. His primary research interests include astrobiology, geobiology, Earth history, and the search for life beyond our solar system.

Affiliations and expertise

University of California, USA

Paul A. Mason

Paul A. Mason is a Professor at New Mexico State University and the Director of Picture Rocks Observatory and Astrobiology Research Center. He obtained two B.S. degrees from the University of Arizona—Astronomy and Physics & Mathematics, where he founded the University of Arizona astronomy club. He received a Masters in Physics from Louisiana State University and a PhD in Astronomy from Case Western Reserve University, where he received the Towson Memorial Scholarship. Professor Mason has been a teacher and researcher at the University of Texas at El Paso and New Mexico State University, Dona Ana Community College, and received the prestigious David Lovelock teaching award. His research includes observations of accreting white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. These observations utilized both ground-based and spaced based telescopes fromradio to gamma-rays. Most recently, he has been theoretically investigating planetary habitability constrained by high energy radiation, especially concerned with the potential for habitability of Earth-like planets orbiting moderately close binary stars. His wrote the seminal paper on enhanced habitability in binary star systems with J. Zuluaga, P. Cuartas and J. Clark who have an online habitability calculator http://bhmcalc.net/ and most recently, Mason Biermann introduced the Supergalactic Habitable Zone concept.

Affiliations and expertise

Professor, New Mexico State University and Director, Picture Rocks Observatory and Astrobiology Research Center, USA

Rajat Mazumder

Dr. Rajat Mazumder received his M.Sc in Applied Geology in 1991 from the University of Allahabad, (India) and his Ph.D from Jadavpur University (India) in 2002. He was a Post-doctoral Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) at Yokohama National University (2002-2004), Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation (2005-2006) at Munich University, Germany, and was a recipient of JSPS short-term invitation fellowship for experienced researchers in 2008. Dr. Mazumder taught Sedimentary Petrology, Mineralogy and Precambrian Stratigraphy at Asutosh College (University of Calcutta, 1999-2002), Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (2006), and was an Associate Professor of Geology at the Indian Statistical Institute (2006-2013). He was a Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales Australia (2012-2014). Currently, Dr. Mazumder is an Associate Professor at Curtin University Sarawak, Malaysia and teaches Basin Analysis and Petroleum Systems, Tectonics and Dynamic Earth and Metamorphic Petrology. Dr. Mazumder was one of the global co-leaders of UNESCO-IGCP 509 research project (2005-2009) on the Paleoproterozoic Supercontinent and global evolution. He is an advisory editor of the Journal of the Geological Society of London and an Associate Editor of Marine and Petroleum Geology. His research is mostly focused on the earth’s surface processes during its early history.

Affiliations and expertise

Curtin University of Technology Sarawak, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Sararak, Malaysia; Clastic sedimentology, stratigraphy and Precambrian Geology

Dominic Papineau

Dr. Papineau has a PhD in Geological Sciences and Astrobiology from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2006) and a B.Sc. in Physics and Biochemistry from McGill University (2001) in Montréal. He has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (2006-2010) and as an Assistant Professor at Boston College (2010-2013). He is now an Associate Professor of Geochemistry and Astrobiology at the University College London (2013-) and is also a ‘Disciplinary Pioneering talent’ at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan (2017-). The overarching theme of his research is about the origin and early evolution of life on Earth as an analogue for extra-terrestrial life. Specifically, he uses micro- to atomic scale chemical imaging techniques to study the geobiological record of the Precambrian.

Affiliations and expertise

Dominic Papineau London Centre for Nanotechnology, UK

Eva Stueeken

Dr. Stüeken obtained a BSc in Geosciences & Astrophysics at Jacobs University, Germany, in 2007 and a PhD in Earth Science and Astrobiology from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, in 2014. She is now a lecturer at the University of St Andrews and the lead PI of the gas-source stable isotope laboratory. Her research focuses on reconstructing paleoenvironments and biogeochemical cycles, using a combination of field work, geochemical analyses, experiments, and modelling.

Affiliations and expertise

University of St Andrews, UK

Aubrey Zerkle

Dr. Aubrey Zerkle is a Reader in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Centre for Exoplanet Science at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, UK. Her research combines inter-disciplinary techniques in stable isotope geochemistry and geobiology to explore the co-evolution of life with planetary environments over geologic timescales.

Affiliations and expertise

University of St Andrews, UK