When and how oxygenic photosynthesis originated remains controversial. Wide uncertainties exist for the earliest detection of biogenic oxygen in the geochemical record or the origin of water oxidation in ancestral lineages of the phylum Cyanobacteria. A unique trait of oxygenic photosynthesis is that the process uses a Type I reaction centre with a heterodimeric core, also known as Photosystem ...

The Earth's age and early differentiation history are re-evaluated using updated isotopic constraints. From the most primitive terrestrial Pb isotopic compositions found at Isua Greenland, and the Pilbara of Western Australia, combined with precise geochronology of these localities, an age 4.49 +/- 0.02 Ga is obtained. This is interpreted as the mean age of core formation as U/Pb is fractionate...

High-resolution geochemical analyses of organic-rich shale and carbonate through the 2500 million-year-old Mount McRae Shale in the Hamersley Basin of northwestern Australia record changes in both the oxidation state of the surface ocean and the atmospheric composition. The Mount McRae record of sulfur isotopes captures the widespread and possibly permanent activation of the oxidative sulfur cy...

Evidence of Archean life: Stromatolites and microfossils J. William Schopf a,∗, Anatoliy B. Kudryavtsev b, Andrew D. Czaja c, Abhishek B. Tripathi c a Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life (Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics), Molecular Biology Institute, and NASA Astrobiology Institute, University of California, Los Angeles,...

Given a solar luminosity LAr = 0.75L0 at the beginning of the Archean 3.8 Ga ago, where L0 is the present-day one, if the heliocentric distance, r, of the Earth was rAr = 0.956r0, the solar irradiance would have been as large as IAr = 0.82I0. It would have allowed for a liquid ocean on the terrestrial surface, which, otherwise, would have been frozen, contrary to the empirical evidence. By furt...

In this dissertation, I investigate the assembly and evolution of the Archean cratonic lithosphere by using two complementary seismological methods to image the lithospheric structure of the Slave craton in Canada. First, I perform surface wave tomographic inversions to constrain the depth dependence of Rayleigh wave phase velocity, shear wave velocity, and azimuthal anisotropy of the Slave cra...

Mass-independent fractionation of sulfur isotopes (S-MIF) results from photochemical reactions involving short-wavelength UV light. The presence of these anomalies in Archean sediments [(4-2.5 billion years ago, (Ga)] implies that the early atmosphere was free of the appropriate UV absorbers, of which ozone is the most important in the modern atmosphere. Consequently, S-MIF is considered some o...