Delightful stromatoliteThis layered rock is a 2.2. billion year old fossil from Bolivia. These layer
Delightful stromatoliteThis layered rock is a 2.2. billion year old fossil from Bolivia. These layers are the characteristic shape of stromatolites, formed by alternating layers of sediment and microscopic organisms. As the organism or organisms grow upwards, they changed the chemistry of the waters around them, causing sediment to stick and sometimes to harden. In samples this old, its difficult to figure out exactly which species were present in any stromatolite or what role they served. Modern day stromatolites tend to have a variety of species, which alternate their growth depending on the chemistry and the availability of food.Colonies like these were likely hosts of cyanobacteria, which helped build up oxygen in the early Earth’s atmosphere, and are a possible place where eukaryotic organisms and even multicellular life could have first evolved.-JBBImage credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/berniedup/8523376035Read more: http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105b/images/gaia_chapter_10/stromatolites.htmhttps://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Stromatolite.html -- source link
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