Drilling 2008
Summer 2008, CGB researchers travelled to the Barberton Mountain Land in South Africa to carry out scientific drilling in some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Working with colleagues from the Africa Earth Observatory Network, University of Cape Town they drilled into rock that is c. 3.4-3.5 billion years old to investigate early life and environments on ancient earth.
Professor Harald Furnes from Bergen and colleagues have discovered some of the world's oldest microbial fossils in these rocks, as reported in Science Magazine in 2004. In the 2008 field season researchers hoped to obtain a more complete understanding of these ancient fossils by collecting pristine drill core from the same rocks. They worked with scientists from AEON (Africa Earth Observatory Network) at the University of Cape Town and an experienced drilling team from DiT (drillers in training).
In the photoHarald Furnes is studying drill core that has been cut in half. He is putting water on the cut surface to reveal the fine textures found in the rock. The bright yellow markers placed in the boxes give the depth beneath ground where the rock was drilled from. Photo credit Nicola McLoughlin
See the links to the right to learn more about the daily activities in the field, summer 2008.
Learn more - news highlights
- Why drill? - read what Professor Harald Furnes has to say about the importance of this field work.
- The core has arrived! - Shipping goods between countries is never easy, but when you are shipping tonnes of unique 3.5 billion-year-old rock, the task assumes daunting proportions. Learn more about the transport challenges and future analysis activity.
- The Emergence of Microbial Life in Archean Pillow Lavas
- Drilling Back 3.5 Billion Years to the Bedrock of Life
- Drilling into 3.5 Billion Year Old Rocks Completed!
- Researcher Nicola McLoughlin explains about the tales about early life that can be read in ancient glass.
External Links:
- AEON Africa Earth Observatory Network Cape Town
- Council for Geoscience, South Africa
- Atlas Copco Exploration Drilling Products
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NEWS UPDATE: Drilling into 3.5 Billion Year Old rocks Completed!
20.07.2008 This summer scientists from the CGB (Center for Geobiology) at the University of Bergen and AEON (Africa Earth Observatory Network) at the University of Cape Town successfully completed drilling of ~800m of Archean rocks, from the Barberton Mountain land in South Africa.
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Norwegian Scientists Depart for South Africa
14.06.2009 Bergen research scientists Harald Furnes and Nicola McLoughlin left Norway today to join South African colleagues currently drilling in the field. They plan to complete work sampling and logging c. 3.4 Billion year old Archean volcanic rocks of the Barberton mountain land and assist with the drilling operations.
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Drilling has started!
17.06.2008 Drilling has commenced at our first site drill site. Good progress has been made during the first few days of drilling in Archean volcanic rocks.
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Slow Going: Drilling Through Cherts
19.06.2008 For the next few days we will be drilling through a rock type known as chert, this is a very hard rock made of silicon oxide and sometimes also called flint.
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Drilling in the Right Direction
20.06.2008 Rock layers form complex three dimensional shapes that beneath the surface of the earth can be sloping, folded and thicken and thin.
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How Geological Drilling Works
21.06.2008 To extract rock from hundreds of meters beneath the surface a rotating diamond studded drill bit is driven into the rock.
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How We Get Rock to the Surface
22.06.2008 Drilling allows us to reach rocks that have been beneath the earth’s surface for millions to billions of years.
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Minimal Environmental Impact
24.06.2008 The DiT drilling team and geologists are working closely with the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) to ensure fulfillment of our scientific goals without compromising a zero to minimal environmental impact both during and after drilling. The compact drill rig and carefully contained working area will ensure minimal environmental impact.
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Second Drill Site Started and Film Crew Arrives
01.07.2008 Our drill rig has been moved to the second drill site.
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Helicopter Assisted Fieldwork
02.07.2008 Today and tomorrow we will be using a helicopter to reach inaccessible field sites in the Barberton Mountain land.
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What is a Pillow Lava?
04.07.2008 Pillow lavas are formed when lava erupts into water and those from the Barberton Mnt Land hold lots of clues about the nature of early volcanoes and microbes on earth.
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More Pillow Talk!
05.07.2008 In the fresh drill core the pillow lavas show excellent fine-scale textures and subtle changes in colour that are not seen on the surface.
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Logging and Labelling
07.07.2008 A very important aspect of any drilling operation is the description and measurement of the rock as it comes out of the ground.
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Paleomagnetism - using fossilised magnetic compasses to track continental motion
08.07.2008 Paleomagnetism is the study of the earth’s ancient magnetic field and can be used to track the movement of tectonic plates through geological time.
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Crossing Geological Boundaries
09.07.2008 Today we drilled across a major break in the geological sequence known as an unconformity. This radical change in rock types from predominantly sedimentary rocks above the unconformity to igneous rocks beneath signifies a major change in earth environments and a missing period of geological time during which major climatic and perhaps tectonic changes occurred.
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Meters and Meters of Rock
16.07.2008 We are nearing the end of the drilling operation and have drilled over 800 meters of rock.
