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COOL PIXELS (7)

by Carel Sartory

[Balsam Post Issue 82 (January 2009) pages 11 to 19.]

Note: for completeness please refer to the original article.

Eriophora transmarine, the Australian garden spider:
This large spider builds huge webs every evening, consumes them at dawn and hides from diurnal predators.
(Fig. 1 in BP).

Eriophora transmarine:
The spider shown in fig.1 hiding in its daytime roost in a forgotten corner of my brother’s veranda.
(Additional image - not in BP).

Map of Shark Bay highlighting the Faure sill:
a build-up of sediment, formed over the past 4,000 years that has created
a landlocked marine basin almost separated from the rest of Shark Bay,
where the salinity is almost twice that of normal seawater.
(Fig.2 in BP).

Stromatolites at Hamelin Pool:
Fossils of similar cyanobacteria colonies are considered to be the oldest known life on earth and
responsible for producing the oxygen that allowed more complex life forms to evolve.
Note: Hamelin Pool is misspelt Hamblin in the Balsam Post article.
(Fig.3 in BP).

Stromatolite from Whetstone Mountains of south-eastern Arizona:
showing the lamination caused by the successive layers of bacteria.
Photograph provided by R.Weller, Cochise College, Arizona, USA.
(Additional image - not in BP).

Fragum erugatum:
a small bivalve mollusc is also able to survive the extreme salinity caused by the Faure Sill:
they exists in huge numbers and have done so for thousands of years.
(Fig.4 in BP).

An old building in Denham built with "Coquina Limestone"
blocks made from Fragum erugatum shells:
over thousands of years the rain water dissolves small quantities of the calcium
carbonate from the shells which cement together to form a sort
of soft limestone which was at one time quarried at Hamelin Pool.
(Additional image - not in BP).

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