High Temperature Resins

Abstract

Algal mats and Recent stromatolites are products of microbial communities composed of cyanophytes, eucaryotic algae, photosynthetic bacteria (thio- rhodo-, athiorhodo-, and chlorobacteria), and various heterotrophic bacteria. Cyanophytes or blue-green algae are the most significant single group engaged in the formation of stromatolites. Historically, they represent the earliest water-photolyzing and 0,-releasing photosynthetic organisms, and they dom- inated Precambrian environments for billions of years. Ecologically, they occupy today a wide array of niches under extreme environmental conditions where other organisms are less successful or cannot exist at all. Their diversity in terms of ecological niches they occupy, and in terms of the resultant stro- matolite morphology, is parallelled by a diversification of taxa (Walter et al., 1973).