Comment on ‘‘Evidence for multiphase deformation in the Archaean basal Warrawoona group in the Marble Bar

van Haaften and White (1998) presented kinematic data from shear zones within the Talga Talga Anticline of the Marble Bar belt to invoke a regional thrust-accretion tectonic origin for the East Pilbara Craton. By examination of small-scale, local faults, they inferred five phases of regional deformation, of which an early ESEdirected thrusting event which reactivated ca. 3450 Ma normal faults, and a NE-directed transport event at 3300 Ma, were interpreted to be the most important. van Haaften and White (1998) state that a lack of radially plunging lineations in the Talga Talga Anticline and the presence of thrust-sense kinematics in bedding-parallel shear zones indicate that the Talga Talga Anticline could not have formed through the solid-state diapiric rise of the Mount Edgar Batholith as suggested by Hickman (1984) and Collins (1989). Rather, they interpret the Talga Talga Anticline to be a thrust culmination formed as a result of three phases of eastto north-eastern directed crustal shortening. The early thrusting was interpreted to have occurred during the accretion of a so-called ‘East Pilbara terrain’, as originally suggested by Krapez (1993). Further, van Haaften and White (1998) use the presence of thrusts, and a re-interpretation of the previous geochronology, to suggest that the volcanic stratigraphy of the Marble Bar belt represent an imbricate lithotectonic sequence. They conclude that ‘the Talga Talga Anticline is an unsuitable area for the type section of the lower Warrawoona Group’, that the conformable stratigraphic scheme proposed by * Corresponding author.