The firstfossilevidence of terrestrial life is found in the early Archean sedimentary rocks of the greenstone-granite belts (metamorphosedoceanic crustandisland arccomplexes) of theBarberton craton inSouth Africaand in theWarrawoonaGroup, which are both roughly 3.5 billion years old. There are two ...
several hundred kilometres in length and measure several hundred metres in width. Today many greenstone-granite belts are regarded astectonic“slices” of oceanic and island arc crust that have been thrust together to form tectonic collages similar to those in belts found in the present-dayPacific ...