…and from Barberton to Vredefort

摘要

As one of the first joint undertakings since the Geological Society of South Africa (GSSA) became an affiliate with the Geological Society of America (GSA), an international field forum to investigate geoogical processes on the early Earth was organized by Uwe Reimold, Carl Anhaeusser and Roger Gibson of the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), Ken Eriksson of the Virginia Polytechical Institute (VPI, USA), Christian Koeberl of the University of Austria, Bruce Simonson of Oberlin College (USA) and Francis Westall of the CNRS Orleans (France). The Field Forum immediately preceded Geoscience Africa, the annual meeting of the GSSA, hosted in 2004 by the School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand (see also articles in this issue, ec/.j. Emphasis was c early on evidence for and the nature of early life, Archaean tides and early meteorite impacts, as evidenced by rocks in the Barberton Mountain Land and the Vredefort Structure. The participants were primarily from overseas which gave the relatively few local geologists a great opportunity to interact with them and to become familiar with what were for some new ideas. If there was a shortcoming to the Field Forum, however, it was this lack of participation by scientists from within South Africa and from overseas who hold contradictory ideas to those of the leaders. In other words, in many cases, only single sides of certain critical arguments were presented in a hopefully unbiased manner. Nevertheless, for me it was a fantastic opportunity to revisit outcrops that I last visited over a decade ago and listen to the advances in understanding that have occurred since then.