THE STROMATOLITES of HAMELIN POOL- SHARK BAY WA

  The road into Denham WA is a 130 km trip that skirts the shores of beautiful Shark Bay, it's brilliant, blue, waters and white, sandy, beaches making for a refreshing change from the sometimes barren and relatively uninteresting country to the North. Along the way the Stromatolites at Hamelin Pool and the white sands and crystal clear waters of Shell Beach add more charm and interest. 
  First up is Hamelin Pool Nature Reserve, a UNESCO world heritage protected area because of the world's most abundant examples of living marine that are found here. Stromatolites are described as 'living fossils', that are believed to be similar to life that existed over 3,500 million ago and are an example of the earliest record of life on earth. They were discovered by surveyors working for an oil exploration company in 1956 and were the first living examples of structures built by Cyanobacteria, direct descendants of the oldest form of photosynthetic life on earth. The waters here are Hypersaline having double the amount of salt that is normally found in the oceans. It is thought that the high salt content prevents the habitation of other marine species that would normally feed on the Cyanobacteria. Stromatolite structures are built when very fine particles of solids like sand and crushed shell are trapped by the sticky bacteria and then cemented with calcium carbonate produced by the organisms. "There are three  types of Stromatolite, the sub-tidal (always under water) columns and the inter-tidal (exposed to air and sun during low tides) anvil or mushroom shapes depicted in most pictures. Algal mats form in the inter-tidal region and appear as areas of flat black mud flats but are actually living stromatolites".
(Click on a photo to enlarge)