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Nora Noffke of Old Dominion University and Stan Awramik of the University of California, Santa Barbara describe the interaction of carpet-like communities of benthic microorganisms (biofilms) with sediment dynamics at the sediment-water interface to form distinctive sedimentary structures called microbialites published in GSA Today.
The best known microbialite structures are stromatolites -- multilayered microbialites up to meters in thickness, built up by repetitive binding, biostabilization, baffling, and trapping of sediment particles by microorganisms, coupled with carbonate precipitation. In the absence of such precipitation, however, these processes result in the formation of very characteristic microbially induced sedimentary structures, or "MISS," best seen on sediment surfaces. READ MORE (Science Codex.com)