Images of Modern Microbes and Microfossils for Earth's Early Biosphere Lab
Modern microbes
Collection site of modern microbes (hover over images for captions)
Modern filamentous and coccoidal cyanobacteria
Note, these are not the same ones shown in lab but they are similar. (hover over images for captions)
Sample 1. Angmaat Formation, ~1 billion years old, Arctic Canada
Explore this gigapan image of a thin section containing hundreds to thousands of microfossils
Sample 2. Gunflint Iron Formation, 1.88 billion years old, Ontario Canada
Explore this gigapan image of a thin section containing lots of microfossils, though most are too small to see
Thin section image of sample SCHDE-30-A2
Images from three areas at increasing depth taken with 40x objective lens
Sample 3. Gamohaan Formation, 2.52 billion years old, South Africa
Comes from a sample similar to this small domal stromatolite sample (#5a) you saw two weeks ago in lab.
Stromatolite specimen
Image of entire thin section GAM-13-1E
Magnified view of lower portion of thin section (zoom in on the layer marked with the yellow star)
Sample 4. Tsineng Member of the Gamohaan Formation, 2.52 billion years old, South Africa (outcrop)
Image of whole thin section TSIN-14-L2-1-4A
Sample 5. Tsineng Member of the Gamohaan Formation, 2.52 billion years old, South Africa (Drill core)
Image of thin section WB-899.8B. Note the microbial layering
