It is 3.2 billion years old, it lies beneath the Barberton Makhonjwa Mountains of South Africa, and it purportedly holds the first evidence of a land-based ecosystem on Earth. Welcome to the Moodies Group of rock formations. These formations record what some have described as slimy, sun-soaked shallows on land.
Per an article in the journal Science, the Moodies Group may preserve some of “Earth’s first microbial producers of oxygen” in a land-based ecosystem. Other spots with evidence of fossilized life have been discovered within marine deposits in places like South Africa, Greenland and Australia, but this is the first confirmed terrestrial deposit.