Archean life in the Barberton Greenstone Belt

The Barberton Greenstone Belt of eastern South Africa contains some of the most widely accepted fossil evidence for Archean life.

[1] The Barberton Greenstone Belt is an excellent place to study the Archean Earth due to exposed sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks.

It has long been hypothesized that life may have existed on Mars due to the similarity of environmental and tectonic conditions during the Archean time.

There is work that potentially demonstrates life at 3.8 billion years ago, in what is now western Greenland,[4][5] but it is highly debated.

The Barberton Greenstone Belt is located on the Kaapvaal craton, which covers much of the southeastern part of Africa, and was formed by the emplacement of granitoid batholiths.

[7] Though the exact timing is still debated, it is likely that Vaalbara existed from approximately 3.6 to 2.2 billion years ago,[8] and then split into two different continents.

The oldest microfossils from the Barberton Greenstone belt are found in the Onverwacht Group, specifically, in both the Kromberg and Hooggenoeg Formations.

[1] Stromatolites represent large colonies of microorganisms, and are found both in the fossil record and rarely in modern hypersaline environments.

There is also ongoing work within the scientific community to solve the problem of how cellular life evolved in a hostile early Earth.