Barberton

The impact site in Eastern Barberton Greenbelt is one of the oldest places on Earth with remnants of a meteorite crash.

The researchers analysed well-preserved particles of carbonaceous matter -- the altered remains of living organisms -- and the corresponding rock layers from samples of the Barberton greenstone belt, a mountain range in South Africa whose rocks are among the oldest on the Earth's surface.

In the mid 1960s, Hawthorn founded the Barberton Rescue Mission, serving men struggling with alcoholism, in a rundown brick hall along a dirt road just outside of Canton.

He and Benevolent Health Systems were ordered to pay $9.6 million in damages to the Barberton Rescue Mission.

Beneath the Barberton Makhonjwa Mountains, home to South Africa’s original gold rush, lies something more scientifically valuable than any precious metal: Earth’s first land ecosystem, trapped in a 3.2-billion-year-old rock formation called the Moodies Group.