The Archean Era

Extra facts that you need to know about the Archean era.

• During this period igneous rocks had begun to dominate the surface of the earth.
• Another thing that happened was liquid water condensed and started to form the oceans we know today.
• Iron ores began forming in large quantities.
• Nitrogen built up in the atmosphere.

The Mesoarchean Period

This was a very interesting period to research, just like in the paleoarchean era oxygen levels still remained very low, partly because what oxygen there was, was being used by rocks and minerals to help oxidize the minerals on the earth's crust and in the sea. The oldest banded iron ore formations were found from this period. Some weathering had begun to occur on rocks which started the formation of soil. One of the biology related things that happened in this period was diversification in stromatalites.

Pictures of the Archean Era and what is might have looked like

Major events of the Archean era.

The Archean Era

The Archean era was one of the most eventful eras in earth’s long history. 70% of the continental land masses that we have today was formed around cores in this period. In this time the atmosphere was much different and would have been deadly to humans today, the atmosphere in the Archean era was composed of methane, ammonia, and many other gases. One of the biggest events in Archean era was the coming of cyanobacteria, cyanobacteria was the first living thing to use photosynthesis, even today cyanobacteria still remains and is common. You can find fossilized cyanobacteria in stromatolites today. Cyanobacteria is mostly found in western Australia and deposits in Michigan. Cyanobacteria first appeared in the fossil record 3.5 bya

The Neoarchean Period.

The Paleoarchean Period

cyanobacteria

This was a very interesting period, multilple sites and evidence suggest that in this period there was non-oxygen producing photosynthesis, which from what we know to day is extremely abnormal. No animals had yet formed but plants were beginning to start growing. There was not yet a very sufficient amount of oxygen in the atmosphere if any.

And all the facts about it.

By Cooper Allers

The Neoarchean period is probably the most important period in the Archean era. During this period most oxygen photosynthesis had begun. Which eventually led to a big extinction known as the oxygen catastrophe because of all the air poisoning, few species survived. Another important detail of this period is that the supercontinent Kenorland formed during this time. One of the biggest events in this period was the beginning of plate tectonics, the continents had just begun to to spread apart. More of this begins to happen in later eras.

The geologic time clock of the Archean era

The Eoarchean Period

The Archean era lasted from 3.8 billion years ago to 2.5 billion years ago, it was one of the longer eras. The Archean era lasted 1,300,000,000 years and on a geologic time clock the Archean era is 3 hours and 28 minutes. Eoarchean, Paleoarchean, Mesoarchean, and Neoarchean are the periods of the Archean era.

One of the major characteristics of the Eoarchean period was that the earth had begun to develop a hard crust, the event that caused the Eoarchean period was a massive asteroid bombardment in the inner solar system. The Eoarchean period was also the first time a solid rock was found from this period. No earlier rocks can be found before this period. Some of the major rock formations that formed in this period was the Isua Greenstone Belt, and the Acata Gneiss.

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