Facts: Shark Bay's stromatolites
The oldest living things on earth in West Australia's Hamelin Pools
Feb 26, 2007
Some lifeforms are inherently exciting. Monkeys, for example, are always up to tricks, whilst penguins can’t help but be comical. Stromatolites, however, are the natural world’s equivalent of the guy from accounts that you’ve given up trying to get a conversation out of.
No matter how much you try to jazz it up, the blighters just aren’t going to leap through hoops of fire, fetch sticks or do amusing dances for tourists. Nope, they just sit there, all day long, filtering air.
Whilst they’re about as interesting to watch as a mime version of Dances With Wolves, they are fascinating in many other ways though. Made up of single cell organisms called cyanobacteria, they have been around for 3.5 billion years. In fact, they are the oldest living things on earth, and without them, we probably wouldn’t be here.
Thought by some scientists to be the first life on earth, stromatolites have played a huge part in creating an atmosphere that we can survive in. They create oxygen as a waste product, and without that, we’d quite frankly be long gone.
Until 1956, scientists thought they no longer existed. Fossilised examples had been found in old rocks, but none still alive. That was the year that millions of living stromatolites were found in the Hamelin Pools of Shark Bay in Western Australia. More have since been found in the Bahamas, but the extremely salty water of Hamelin Pools has allowed this ancient life to survive undetected. They are the main reason that Shark Bay is World Heritage listed, and whilst they don’t exactly entertain, such history has an incredibly mesmerising quality.
There’s also something rather moody about the way the little black rocks stretch out towards the Indian Ocean, particularly if you arrive just before sunset. It feels like you’re at the end of the earth, as well as the beginning of time.
A viewing platform, board walk and information about the Hamelin Pools stromatolites can be found 105km from Denham in Shark Bay. Denham is 842km north of Perth, and Hamelin Pools is on the way. Try the Shark Bay office of the Department of Conservation And Land Management (08 9948 1208) to find out more.
