The baby serpents from the eggs that hatched carved out rivers, then when dying, they tunnelled underground forming subterranean springs on their way back to the Dreamtime. These springs provided fresh water for the Noongar people. From a scientific point of view, the microbial thrombolites use sunlight to photosynthesise for energy and to precipitate calcium carbonate limestone from the freshwater springs that bubble from the underlying aquifer.
Groundwater flow that is low in salinity and nutrients and high in alkalinity is integral to their growth and survival; any alteration challenges their existence. Lake Clifton is a fragile environment. Conservation actions for Lake Clifton now include the construction of the boardwalk to prevent crushing the thrombolites, monitoring water quality and levels, protecting the buffer of native vegetation that helps filter nutrients and pollutants, monitoring the health of the thrombolite community and liaising with urban and agricultural landholders to manage and protect water quality.
These stepping stones of life are in need of protection. Encroaching urbanisation has increased the inflow of nutrients, causing algal bloom that blocks sunlight and smothers the thrombolites.
In just more than years of human-induced stresors on the lake, survival of these ancient organisms is tenuous. Like the Dreamtime serpent, Woggaal Maadjit, it is up to us to protect them.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Share using Email. By Marian McGuinness 18th January In Western Australia, 3. We can witness how the world looked at the dawn of time. Survival for these ancient organisms is tenuous. Skip to Content. Home Species Stromatolites. The Stromatolites of Hamelin Pool at Hamelin Station Reserve may look like a cross between gigantic cauliflowers and rocks, but they're incredibly important as modern examples of the earliest known life forms on Earth.
These deposits built up very slowly: a single 1m structure may be 2, to 3, years old. But the tiny microbes that make up modern Stromatolites are similar to organism that existed 3. Where do Stromatolites live? Stories about native species Get email news. Support river restoration Donate now. The mounds they built around the world reveal that they began the process at least 3. By about 1.
These cyanobacteria belong to the family known as blue-green algae — a misnomer since they are not an algae at all. They were among the first organisms to collect their energy from the sun using photosynthesis — breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen.
Those other organisms then evolved into the plants we see on land and the seafloor. In doing so, the stromatolite-forming bacteria sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Though they thrived in hellish environments like those on early Earth, they were unsuited to the paradise they created and disappeared. In a process that is hard not to compare with what humans are doing now; they changed the climate so dramatically they were no longer able to survive.
Or at least that was what scientists thought until , when an oil company surveying Hamelin pool found active bacteria. Since then they have been found in a handful of places around the world but Hamelin pool is by far the most important.
In its waters lie many more active stromatolites than any other location — roughly m of the slimy mounds, each growing by about 1mm a year. Suosaari says the bacteria building the stromatolites at Hamelin pool are the same as those that were active 3. In the most general terms, it is the extreme nature of the pool — the high salinity, the large tides and the enormous swings in temperature that emulate aspects of early Earth — that makes it possible for these extremophiles to grow.
To make that connection, the researchers simulated billion-year-old conditions by assembling modern-day stromatolites and foraminifera from thrombolites.
The researchers suspect that a similar take-over occurred a billion years ago, all over the planet, driving only the most extreme of stromatolites out of existence, or at least turning them into a messy version of their former selves.
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