Where: South Africa (25.7° S, 31.3° E)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Fig Tree Group, Paleoarchean (3600.0 - 3200.0 Ma)

• Upper third of the Fig Tree Series. The onset of sedimentation of the overlying Fig Tree Group was diachronous across the BGB (Byerly et al., 1996; Drabon et al., 2019a), ranging from 3277 ± 5 Ma, the maximum depositional age from detrital zircons of slightly reworked tuffaceous sediment derived from penecontemporaneous rhyolitic activity (Drabon et al., 2019a), to 3243 ± 4 Ma, the mean age of three zircons from a basal dacitic tuff sample (Kroner et al., 1991). The end of Fig Tree sedimentation occurred around 3225 ± 3 Ma according to zircons from a dacitic conglomerate (Kroner et al., 1991).

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: marine; lithified, black chert

Size class: microfossils

Preservation: permineralized, original carbon, replaced with silica

Collection methods: peel or thin section

• Repository: Harvard University Paleobotany Collection

Primary reference: E. S. Barghoorn and J. W. Schopf. 1966. Microorganisms three billion years old from the Precambrian of South Africa. Science 152:758-763 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 227612: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Matthew Clapham on 20.10.2022

Creative Commons license: CC0 (CC0)