Archean Problematic Fossil Genera

Archean Problematic Fossil Genera is a Browse By group of the Nature Atlas that gathers fossil genera from the Archean eon, the oldest span of the geological record, whose biological identity is disputed or unknown, such as Thuchomyces, a genus preserved in carbonaceous thucholite from the Witwatersrand of South Africa that was once read as a lichen or fungus and is now considered almost certainly not a lichen, or even a eukaryote at all. An entry belongs here when its own cited article states that the fossil is Archean and that its nature is unsettled. It excludes the problematic fossils of the Proterozoic, Ediacaran, Cambrian and later periods, which have groups of their own. The group lets a reader follow the debate over the first life on land.