About this book
The Archean Earth: Tempos and Events, second edition is a process-based reference book that focuses on the most important events in 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.
Contents
Section 1. Formation of a habitable planet
Section 2. Archean tectonics and volcanism
Section 3. Generation of continental crust
Section 4. Atmospheric evolution and environments
Section 5. Evolution of life and Archean geobiology
Section 6. Sedimentation through Archean time
Section 7. Towards a synthesis
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Biography
Dr Martin Homann obtained an 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.
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 interdisciplinary techniques in stable isotope geochemistry and geobiology to explore the co-evolution of life with planetary environments over geologic timescales.
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 the University of Zurich. Ernst is a 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 used in their paintings.
Prof. Christoph 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.
Prof. Timothy 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 honoured 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 PhD from Yale University. His primary research interests include astrobiology, geobiology, Earth history, and the search for life beyond our solar system.
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 Master's 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 space-based telescopes from radio to gamma rays. Most recently, he has been theoretically investigating planetary habitability constrained by high energy radiation, especially concerned with the potential for the habitability of Earth-like planets orbiting moderately close binary stars. He 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 and most recently, Mason Biermann introduced the Supergalactic Habitable Zone concept.
Dr Rajat Mazumder received his M.Sc in Applied Geology in 1991 from the University of Allahabad, (India) and his PhD 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 the 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.
Dr Dominic 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 Montreal. 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.
Dr Eva 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 fieldwork, geochemical analyses, experiments, and modelling.
