Extra-large and morphologically unique microfossils of the 2.52 Ga
Gamohaan Formation, South Africa
Abstract
The microorganisms that evolved during the Archean era had extraordinary
impacts on this planet. If not for them, Earth would not have developed
the oxygen-rich atmosphere needed to support the evolution of
multicellular organisms. However, our direct observations of life from
that time come from only fifteen known fossiliferous Archean rock
formations, and the exploration of these formations is not complete. As
a result, study of these formations can yield new insights into the
communities of microfossils that lived in the Archean era and previously
unobserved microfossil morphologies. Here we present spheroid
microfossils, as well as unusually large microfossils with clublike
morphologies not previously observed in Archean microorganisms. These
microfossils were three-dimensionally preserved in black chert from the
Gamohaan Formation, Griqualand West Basin, Kaapvaal Craton, South
Africa. These microfossils were discovered in a small, domal
stromatolite that formed in a shallow marine setting on a carbonate
shelf system at 2.52 billion years ago (Sumner and Bowring, 1996), just
one to two hundred million years before the Great Oxidation Event.