Living stromatolites discovered in Tasmanian World Heritage Area

[gary]

Some readers may have seen the living stromatolite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite)s at Hamelin Pool in
Shark Bay, Western Australia, just off the road out to Monkey Mia.

Stromatolites are the oldest evidence for life on Earth.

Though the fossil record shows they were abundant on Earth 3.5 billion
years ago, today living ones are rare.

Therefore it has come as a surprise for researchers to discover living
stromatolites in a remote valley in the south-west of Tasmania within
the Wilderness World Heritage Area.

The discovery has been reported in a paper in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15507-1).

Press release here :-
http://www.media.utas.edu.au/general-news/all-news/ancient-life-form-discovered-in-remote-tasmanian-valley

Full story here by Stephanie Pappas at Living Science:-
https://www.livescience.com/60962-living-fossils-of-oldest-life-tasmania.html?utm_source=notificati on



Open access scientific report at Nature entitled "Stromatolites on the rise in peat-bound karstic wetlands" by Bernadette C. Proemse, et. al. here :-
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15507-1

[RobF]

Extraordinary. Thanks for sharing Gary.

[acropolite]

Wonderful find. South West Tasmania is a unique place, our Tasmanian government has a very poor environmental track record, lets hope they don't trash this area like many others.

[Rob_K]

That's great news Gary, thanks! A visit to see the stromatolites of Hamelin Pool was a highlight of a WA 'road trip' we took last year - they have fascinated me since I was a schoolboy and to actually be there was, well, out-this-world! :) I've attached a few photos I took.

Cheers -

[AstralTraveller]

Stromatolites were certainly around at 3.7Ga and perhaps as far back as 3.8Ga. And keep in mind that these are bacterial colonies and so probably represent a fair degree of development over the original life forms.

I've actually had the pleasure of holding the oldest evidence for life in my hand. Not only that, I took 5 samples from it and analysed them for the carbon and oxygen isotope ratios of the carbonate fraction. The results were published in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19355) - my name appears way down the bottom in the acknowledgements. That's enough to make me happy.

[SteveInNZ]

There's a dinosaur museum in Utah that has a living stromatolite on display which they water every so often. That sounds perfect to me. I'd love a pet stromatolite.

Steve.

[gary]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the great photos!

I visited Hamelin Pool about 25 years ago and got to see them.

At that time there was just a tiny, old, faded wooden sign pointing down
to where they were. I had gone purposely looking for them, but for
most passers-by on the road, they would be easy to miss.



Thanks David,

That's a wonderful story.

And puts you in a unique position whenever you say to someone, "Believe me. You are not old". :)

[AstralTraveller]

It's also a sad story. The rock outcrop containing the evidence was only recently exposed due to the retreat of the Greenland icecap. That bit of knowledge has come at some considerable expense to humanity.

[gary]

Hi David,

Thanks for the background. Sad to hear that it was only discovered because of melting ice from man-made climate change.