With BuCoMO II in full swing, the time is coming to think about the future of the French-South African collaboration. We had a great few days in the field in January 2026, during which we were fortunate to involve new members, both South African (Ariela Mazoz, Cristiano Lana) and French (Stéphanie Brichau, Adrien Vezinet, Etienne Médard).
So what’s next? In general, we agreed on a few avenues of interest. Mostly in Barberton, because this is where we met … but there will be comparisons with other areas!
- The deformation of the Archean crust in Barbeton. We are particularly interested in
- The formation of the Onverwacht anticline, a large “anticline” with a steeply plunging axis; its exhumation seems to form the topography that feeds the detritus filling the Moodies basin;
- The interaction between the ca. 3.1 Ga magmatism and the regional strain (this is largely a consequence of the findings of Laurine Travers).
- The behaviour of apatite in magmatic and metamorphic systems, and during exhumation:
- Unravelling the magmatic and metamorphic signatures in the ca. 3.45 Ga TTG plutons, and their surroundings (this is a spin-off of Moritz Mühlberg‘s work, and also has implications on the rheology and evolution of the middle Archean crust).
- Using apatite as a tracer for exhumation and recent landscape evolution, through thermochronlogy.
- The origin and evolution of granitoid magmas:
- The architecture of magmatic systems, from top to bottom (cf. Laurent et al.)
- The meaning of heterogeneities in plutons – this links to work being done by H. Fest in the Variscan French Massif Central.
Of course, this will lead into new projects !
