The Archean Earth: Tempos and Events

The Archean Earth: Tempos and Events, Second Edition is a process-based reference book that focuses on the most important events in early Earth, bringing together experts across Earth Sciences to give a comprehensive overview of the main events of the Archean Eon, as well as of the rates at which important geological and geobiological processes occurred in the same time interval. Over the last two decades, significant progress has been made in our understanding of the processes and events on the early Earth corresponding to advances in the analytical technologies and the continuing efforts of many colleagues that pursue their passion of unravelling the Archean rock record.

The book addresses the origin of the Earth, succeeding impact events, and the evolution of the early Earth, covering topics such as Archean tectonics, volcanism, generation of continental crust, and the ongoing debate about the onset of plate tectonics; the evolution and models for Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere; the Archean atmosphere and chemical sedimentation; and sedimentation through Archean time; among others. Each topic is well-illustrated and includes a closing commentary at the end of each chapter, leading up to the final chapter which blends the major geological events and rates at which important processes occurred into a synthesis, postulating a number of "event clusters" in the Archean when significant changes occurred in many natural systems and geological environments

• Provides a comprehensive introduction and overview on early Earth, highlighting the Archean Eon in the context of the larger time scales
• Presents detailed descriptions of the main processes, events, and rates that occurred throughout the Archean
• Offers an assessment of the first habitable environments, the preserved morphological and geochemical traces of early life, and the impact it had on Earth's biogeochemical cycles

Dr. Homann received his MSc in Geology from the University of Potsdam, Germany, in 2010 and his PhD in Geobiology from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, in 2016. After three years of postdoctoral research at the University of Western Brittany in France, he worked as an Assistant Professor in Sedimentology at University College London until the end of 2022. Following a brief appointment as a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology from 2023 to 2024, he became a Research Investigator at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in 2025 and currently also works as a Senior Consultant for Amentum Ltd.

His research focuses on the Archean biosphere―specifically, the environments where microbial life thrived billions of years ago and the morphological and geochemical traces it left behind in Earth’s oldest sedimentary archives. He uses a multidisciplinary approach that combines field-generated data with lab-based observations, experiments, and geochemical analysis.

Professor Wladyslaw Altermann is a regional geologist with expertise in Precambrian sedimentary systems, carbonate rocks, early life evolution, and more recently, CO₂ sequestration in South Africa. Originally from Poland, he earned his MSc and PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) at the Free University of Berlin (West), focusing on Permo-Carboniferous rocks of Thailand and Malaysia. He also worked for the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover and in Peru.

In 1988, Prof. Altermann moved to South Africa, which became his third home. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Stellenbosch, he returned to Germany to join LMU Munich, where he completed his second doctorate (Dr. habil.) in 1998, studying Archean carbonates, stromatolites, BIFs, and the western Kaapvaal Craton's structural geology.

Prof. Altermann held postdoctoral positions at UCLA (USA), CBM–CNRS Orléans (France), and the University of Western Australia (Perth). He later became Associate Professor at LMU Munich, where he served as interim chair for several professorial positions and served as Honorary Professor at Shandong University of Technology (China) from 2003 to 2005. In 2009, he returned permanently to South Africa, joining the University of Pretoria as the Kumba-Exxaro Chair in Geodynamics of Mineral Deposits (mining industry supported Chair) and later becoming Head of the Department of Geology.

Throughout his career, Prof. Altermann has been deeply involved in the scientific community, serving on national committees and editorial boards for international journals and as editor of books and special volumes. He was a Vice-President of the Geological Society of Africa and Chairman of the South African Committee for Stratigraphy. He retired from UP in 2019 and has since been working as a freelance geological consultant in Pretoria.

Prof. Lyons is a Distinguished Professor of Biogeochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California-Riverside, and Director of the UCR Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center. Lyons currently leads the ‘Alternative Earths’ team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and within NASA’s Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research. He is also a co-leader of NASA’s Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments Research Coordination Network. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geochemical Society, the European Association of Geochemistry, and the American Geophysical Union. He has been honored with visiting professorships throughout the world. He holds a B.S. from the Colorado School of Mines, an M.S. from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. from Yale University. His primary research interests include astrobiology, geobiology, Earth history, and the search for life beyond our solar system.

Dr Richard Ernst is Scientist in Residence at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His career has been focussed on Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) with nearly 300 refereed publications on all aspects of LIPs: including their dramatic flood basalts, ‘plumbing system’ of mafic/ultramafic dykes, sills and layered intrusions, and association with carbonatites, kimberlites and silicic magmatism; links to supercontinent breakup, catastrophic environmental/climate change including mass extinction events, mineral, metal and hydrocarbon resource exploration, and planetary analogues; and characterizing the role of mantle plumes in their origin. He is the author of “Large Igneous Provinces”, Cambridge University Press (2014), a leader of the LIPs Commission of IAVCEI (since 2003), leader of the LIPs and Resource Exploration Program (“LIPs Industry Consortium”, since 2010), leader of the International Venus Research Group (IVRG) (since 2021). He received the 2022 Career Achievement Award of the Volcanology and Igneous Petrology Division (VIP) of the Geological Association of Canada, and was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America (2024).

Prof. Heubeck is a regional "soft-rock" geologist. Originally from Germany, he completed an MSc at the University of Texas at Austin on Tertiary basins on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, followed by a PhD from Stanford University on the Barberton Greenstone Belt of South Africa and Eswatini. He worked for six years as an explorationist and development geologist for Amoco and BP in the US and Canada before joining the Free University Berlin as a faculty member. There, he conducted studies on the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary in Kazakhstan and China and on Andean Tertiary basins in South America before taking up his interest in the Barberton Greenstone Belt again. In 2014, he moved to the FSU Jena where he holds the chair of General and Historical Geology. Most of his studies are field-based, range from the grain- to the basin-scale, and use - in collaboration with experts - whatever methods are necessary to address the problem at hand.