Iron deposition, Archaean

Goodwin, A.M., 1973b. Archaean volcanogenic iron-formation of the Canadian Shield. In Genesis of Precambrian Iron and Manganese Deposits. Unesco, Paris, pp. 23-34,... 

Martin J. Gole completed his BA at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, in 1972, and initially worked as an exploration geologist before completing his PhD on Archaean banded iron formations at the University of Western Australia in 1979. He then spent 2 A years in the USA, undertaking postdoctoral research at Indiana University and Northwest Illinois University and teaching at Georgia State University. He joined the CSIRO in 1981 to work on the use of helium in exploration and, from 1984 to 1988, worked on komatiite-hosted nickel sulphide deposits. Since 1989 he has been a consultant geologist. 

The oldest existing rocks on Earth, from the Isua supracrustal belt of West Greenland, are dated at 3.8 X 10 years (Moorbath et al., 1973) and consist of metamorphosed sediments. It has been suggested that the carbon in the Isua banded iron formation may be photosynthetic in origin (Schidlowski et al., 1979). Whether this remarkable conclusion is substantiated by further work remains to be seen. It is in any case abundantly clear from the available evidence that the conditions of deposition of the oldest known sediments were remarkably like those prevailing during the rest of the Archaean (4.6 — 2.6 X 10 years). Furthermore, with the exception of the appearance... 

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