Are you sick of rock photos yet?

Well, fooled ya! These ones aren’t rocks, they’re fossils.

In the small northern Newfoundland coastal town of Flower’s Cove lies something apparently pretty spectacular - Thrombolites. 

To you and me, they look like large flat, bun-shaped rocks on the edge of the ocean. But to geologists and biologists, and biogeochemists and all the other ‘ists’ out there, they’re more than that.

I’m not much for science, but my understanding is that each Thrombolite fossil was once a giant colony of tiny living algae and bacteria. These organisms are the earliest forms of life - living from 3.5 billion to 650 million years ago.

Not only is it amazing that we can still see evidence of these organisms that are the foundation of us, and everything around us, but that apparently they are pretty darn rare. the only other place you can see Thrombolites is in Western Australia.

So, no rocks this time, but I can’t promise there won’t be any more rock photos in a future blog post.

In the early 1900's, this was the only access to Flower's Cove - and by foot or by horse only.