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Formed between 3.6 billion and a couple of.8 billion years in the past, the rocks of the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia are a number of the oldest on Earth. The iron-rich rocks right here started forming earlier than there was oxygen in Earth’s environment and even life itself. The space additionally harbors proof of a number of the earliest life—3.45-billion-year-old fossil colonies of microbial cyanobacteria, the oldest recognized stromatolites on Earth.

The false-color picture above exhibits a part of the Hamersley Basin in Western Australia, which lies on the southern Pilbara Craton. A craton is the secure, geologically inactive core of an historical continent. The Pilbara Craton has remained intact, surviving the affronts of plate tectonics and erosion for the reason that Archean Eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years in the past).

During the Archean, and the Proterozoic Eon that adopted, a number of cratons assembled to type the Australian continent, leaving a number of basins and belts of buckled and folded rocks at their margins. The important cratons that fashioned Western Australia are the Pilbara and Yilgarn. They started to assemble about 2.2 billion years in the past throughout a mountain-building episode known as the Capricorn Orogeny.

The land that’s as we speak often known as the Hamersley Basin was then on the backside of an ocean mendacity between the 2 cratons. The rocks of the basin protect a file of the final ocean surroundings within the space earlier than the cratons converged and closed the basin.

Atop the granite and greenstone rocks of the Pilbara Craton lie the youthful rocks of the Fortescue, Hamersley, and Turee teams, which had been deposited between 2.7 billion and a couple of.3 billion years in the past. Together these rocks type the Mount Bruce Supergroup, which holds a singular place in Australia’s geologic historical past.

According to the Geological Survey of Western Australia, not solely do these rocks maintain the best-preserved sequence of Archean volcanic rocks, however in addition they embrace probably the most steady rock file of the transition from the Archean to the Proterozoic 2.5 billion years in the past (together with a file of the Great Oxidation Event). In addition, they’re probably the most economically necessary ores on the Australian continent. These iron-rich rocks, together with the world’s thickest and most intensive banded iron formations, type the premise of the iron-ore mining business within the area.

The picture was acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite tv for pc on October 12, 2004. It is a composite of ASTER bands 4-2-1. These bands detect shortwave-infrared gentle, near-infrared and visual crimson gentle, and inexperienced gentle, that are displayed as crimson, inexperienced, and blue, respectively. In this show, iron-rich rocks seem yellow to inexperienced. Light-colored, iron-poor rocks seem white, whereas dark-colored iron-poor rocks are darkish blue. Areas with extra vegetation cowl seem darkish crimson. This is as a result of vegetation replicate extra near-infrared than inexperienced gentle. A linear distinction stretch has additionally been utilized to the picture to reinforce the colour distinction and assist distinguish rock varieties.

For instance, within the high heart of the picture, the knob-shaped outcrop coloured blue and inexperienced exhibits the rocks of the Hamersley Group—which incorporates 4 main banded-iron formations separated by sequences of iron-poor dolomites, shales, and volcanics.

At the highest left of the picture, the white space exhibits the southeast portion of the Rocklea Dome, which consists of light-colored granites. The dome is the remnant core of a plunging anticline—a buckled-up ridge that tilts down into the bottom. Erosion of the fold’s floor uncovered the dome’s granite core, which intruded into the encircling rock through the Archaean Eon. The dome can also be visibly crosscut with basalt intrusions. To the north, these rocks underlie the Hamersley Group, however right here they’re uncovered on the floor.

The remainder of the picture largely exhibits the world underlain by the volcanic and sedimentary rocks of the Fortescue Group. Much of this land is vegetated, largely Spinifex grasses, shrubs, and bushes. The backside of the picture exhibits the city of Paraburdoo and its airport.

NASA Earth Observatory picture by Joshua Stevens, utilizing information from NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Story by Sara E. Pratt.

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