Stromatolith (Stromatolite)

One of the detail images (I thought I already submitted this one...) I'm drawing for my Bachelor project for the Swiss National Park about Alp Grimmels. This one being from the Jurassic and Cretaceous (180-150 million years ago) landscape when the region was part of the Tethys sea floor that covered most of what will later be the Alps. Though many mountains of the Swiss National Park do contain many fossils of corals, cephalopods, fish and even sauropterygians like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, the Alp Grimmels was funnily enough a shallow lagoon with high salinity and very few organisms that could survive in it. It can be compared Australia's Shark Bay and just like Shark bay today, the lagoon of Alp Grimmels was inhabited by stromalotites that could survive the salinity and prevent being consumed or destroyed by other aquatic animals. Many fossils of stromatolites can be seen when hiking in the region.
Stromalotites aren't one single animal but colonies of different bacteria and primitive algae, able of generating their energy from photosynthesis. During the night, the cells use the energy they produced during day and through biochemic processes excrete a thin layer of limestone, until thec become active again at day break. Through this process, stromatolites can slowly grow into grotesque rock formations under water of varying size. Stromatolites are considered one of the oldest organisms on Earth, dating back to as much as 3.7 billion years and are among the first organisms that produced oxygen through photosynthesis, since the water protected them from the deadly UV rays when Earth didn't had a sufficient atmosphere. They are therefor considered an important element to the production of a sufficient oxygen-filled atmosphere that allowed life to colonize the land masses. The daily layers of stromatolites do not only helped scientists to estimate how old the colonies are but also helped to find out that back then, Earth had more days per year that were shorter than today. Living stromatolites can still be found in several places around the world like Shark Bay, Australia where the colonies are safe from other organisms that could feed on them.


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