Talk:Shark Bay

Salinity
This needs work. "In Shark Bay's hot, dry climate, evaporation greatly exceeds the annual precipitation rate. Thus, the seawater in the shallow bays becomes very salt-concentrated, or 'hypersaline'. Seagrasses also restrict the tidal flow of waters through the bay area, preventing the ocean tides from diluting the sea water. The water of the bay is 1.5 to 2 times more salty than the surrounding ocean waters." Normal ocean salinity is around 35 parts per thousand (‰or ppt) so this statement is that the water of the bay is about 53‰ to 70‰. I'm sure that there are isolated areas - tidal pools and very shallow embayments - of Shark Bay which get up there, but the vast majority of the bay is in reasonably good contact with the surrounding ocean and has a highish, but not abnormal salinity. Cross Reference (talk) 11:26, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Stromatolite age
Shark Bay stromatolites are 3000 million years old! They would have been wiped out by the Woodleigh crater impact 364 Ma which was (possibly partly) responsible for a minor mass extinction in the Devonian period. Incidentally, Shark Bay is formed by the incoming trajectory of that meteor. Aarghdvaark (talk) 05:17, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually it is 3.5 billion years, according to this article and many others. That is how resilient they are. - Shiftchange (talk) 05:35, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe you are correct. This page states they are only a few thousand years old but are similar to life forms in existence billions of years ago. - Shiftchange (talk) 05:42, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Stromatolites as a species?
I think someone has mixed up somethings a bit. Stromatolites now are presented, as if they were specimen of a species. The article Stromatolite describe them as a kind of structure, and mentions that these structures may be created by different kinds of microorganism. I think the latter is true, since that is what I've learnt about stromatolites elsewhere.

Besides, the conditions for life were rather different from today 3.5 Gy ago, and I doubt that the species then forming stromatolites could survive at Shark Bay today. JoergenB (talk) 15:33, 24 August 2017 (UTC)


 * This is correct, stromatolites are a sedimentary structure which microbial mats produce as sediment sticks to their inter-cellular matrix (think sand stuck in bacterial slime). Many different species of microorganism can produce stromatolites Paintato34343 (talk) 17:49, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I believe that "species" is vague and not correct. What's meant is "a living representative of stromatolite formations" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ronkonkaman (talk • contribs) 16:36, 19 June 2018 (UTC)