Early Earth systems. A geochemical approach / Системы ранней Земли. Геохимический подход

The guy on the other end of the phone was offering me a job! A British government funded contract to work in the Geological Survey of Sierra Leone. As a fresh graduate this was an exciting prospect – a whole unexplored Archaean craton at my feet. The next three and a half years were an exciting time. It was the early 1970s when important new discoveries were being made in Archaean rocks in South Africa and the novel ideas of plate tectonics were still being newly applied to early Earth history. My position as a survey geologist provided me with the opportunity to map several greenstone belts and what seemed like an endless tract of granite gneisses and at the same time apply these new ideas in what appeared to be virgin territory. These were ‘formative’ years which cemented my fascination with the Archaean, an absorption which has remained with me over subsequent decades. <...>