How It All Began

The other day I was researching on the internet places to see around my home town that I didn't know about and came across the Thrombolites. These Thrombolites are approximately 40 minutes south of where I live so this morning I got up early and went for a drive down to Lake Clifton to take some photos. Getting there early was a good idea as I had the place to myself and the temperature was nice and there were no flies around.

This photo is of the walkway out to the Thrombolites which are situated along the waters edge. The lake itself was teeming with Black Swans.

What are Thrombalites?

Millions of years ago, earth, as we know it was a little different, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere and there was no protective ozone layer. Scientists believe that things began changing when tiny organisms started to appear (from where, no one knows). These tiny little organisms lived in water and produced oxygen. This oxygen entered the atmosphere and over time created the atmosphere we live in today. Now this process didn't happen overnight, the organisms had to produce large quantities of oxygen over a long period of time before earth could sustain life. One of the ancestors of these tiny organisms are in fact algae, yes those aquatic plants. Stromatolites and thrombolites are created by algae and represent the earliest record of life on earth.

Thrombolites are formed when the micro-organisms photosynthesise. During this processs they are able to precipitate calcium carbonate from the waters of the lime-enriched lake to form the rock-like structures. Luckily Lake Clifton has an abundance of fresh ground water which is high in calcium carbonate providing the perfect environment. Thrombolites and stromatolites were the only known form of life on Earth some 350 to 650 million years ago. Microbes found in both thrombolite and stromatolite formations are believed to be responsible for oxygen production which allowed life to exist on the planet. Thrombolites are the most common form of microbialites and are formed by a variety of micro-organisms. They grow at an average of 1mm a year.