#ThinsectionThursday early #Jurassic tempestites where #crinoids have been converted from calcite to glauconite. The conversion has even preserved the micron scale detail of the stereom. Each image about 5 mm wide. #geology #paleontology #echinoderm

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#ThinsectionThursday early #Jurassic tempestites where #crinoids have been converted from calcite to glauconite. The conversion has even preserved the micron scale detail of the stereom. Each image about 5 mm wide. #geology #paleontology #echinoderm

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Growth rings in the mineral, just like the rings of the tree trunk show how it grew over time. Mineral plagioclase in the rock gabbro. Image was taken with a petrographic microscope.
Hi. Here’s a thin section of my favorite rock: peridotite. This is our Earth’s mantle which means we’re basically gliding on microscopic glitter - kinda ✨
Ancient Microbial Mat
#ThinsectionThursday An extreme close up of a #Precambrian microbial mat. This sample is over 1 billion years old. Dirty grey-brown is silt and silica cement with amorphous organic matter. Orange brown is titanite, and the dark grey brown to black is filamentous organic matter. The image is about 0.25 mm across #Geology #Paleontology.
Intruded Pelite
#ThinsectionThursday A carbonate vein intruding a 3.2 billion year old pelite. Greenish mineral is chlorite, dirty grey brown material is carbonate, pale grey white material is quartz, opaque material is pyrite. 4x Magnification #Geology #Metamorphic

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Fossil Microbial Mats
Extreme close ups of 1.3 billion year old microbial mats in muddy OM rich chert. Fossils are the dark filaments and spheres, surrounded by a pale coating of phosphate and silica. Some fossils have been replaced by silica, phosphate, or pyrite. The little spheres and long filamentous structures are the fossil microbes. The scale bar at the side says 20 microns, which is a bit thinner than a human hair. So that gives you an idea of how tiny these microbes where.
Each sphere and filament was a tiny colony of individual microbes. So each sphere and filament is like a tower block full of apartments the microbes lived in, and the mat is like a city.
But these mats were so dense and thick, that if you scaled up one of the fossil microbes to the size of an average human, the mat would be 25 km high and cover all of Europe and most of Asia.
Mats like this covered the floor of Earths shallow seas long before animals and plants evolved. The tops of the mats were photo synthesisers, below them live microbes that could convert sulphur and iron into energy.
These microbial communities worked nonstop for billions of years, changing the chemistry of the Earths oceans and atmosphere, pumping out oxygen, and making the world habitable to more complex life like the first simple animals, and eventually humans.
They were here long before even the simplest animals and plants, and they will be here long after we have gone. Microbial mats like this will probably be some of the last life on Earth, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were common on warm, wet, rocky planets throughout the universe.
#ThinsectionThursday and an early #FossilFriday A section through 2 crinoid ossicles from the earliest Jurassic #Redcar Mudstone from Redcar Beach, UK. You can see the joint between ossicles and the stereom texture quite nicely. Brown is OM, black is pyrite.
Microscope photo of a crinoid stem showing it is made from light grey calcite with a bobbly texture called stereom. The plates of the stem are connected via a curving zig zag where rounded ridges on one plate lock into the corresponding grooves of another plate. the upper right of the picture is taken up by light brown organic matter and tiny black squares of pyrite.
bryanseym Thin section of a garnet schist under cross-polarized light. Rocks are cool.