Stromatolites and Thrombolites

I don't know how many people get excited about going to Western Australia to see the oldest creatures on Earth, but I did. I read that they are among the first forms of life on the planet. Basically, only the Earth itself is older than these formations. Stromatolites and thrombolites are ancient prokaryotes, Cyanobacteria, which inhabited the Earth about 2.5 to 3.8 billion years ago, during Archean, and can be seen now in this "rocky" small piles about 30-40 cm wide and 20 cm tall in shallow salty/fresh lake water or close to it. These mounds that look like loaves of bread contain billions of Cyanobacteria as well as calcium carbonate and sediments. What I think is fascinating about the stromatolites and thrombolites is that the Cyanobacteria, when in abundant numbers on Earth, produced so much oxygen as metabolic byproduct that all the oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere and became toxic to these first forms of life. It destroyed most of them. This was how life expanded on the planet, as the process was so slow that the oxygen allowed the aerobic forms of life to develop and thrive. The first picture shows the Thrombolites we saw at Lake Clifton in Western Australia, which is part of the Yalgorup National Park. These are "young" Thrombolites, geologically speaking, as they are about 2000 years old and alive. Their ancestors are those that enabled life formation billions of years ago.

The second picture shows the stromatolites we saw at Lake Thetis in the Nambung National Park, in Cervantes, WA.

The third picture is that of a figure posted at Lake Clifton to explain the difference between thrombolites and stromatolites.

The surrounding forest and bush from Lake Clifton thrived with an endless web of webs (I hope you can see them below), all created by jewel spiders. There was no border among webs, just as if someone laid an endless piece of fabric onto the area. I believe the lake is home to flies and mosquitoes (mozzies) enough to feed onto these other insects. This was an impressive finding, although I had to duck my head quite often, so I wouldn't stick my head in the webs.