Welcome!

This website is not the entry point for the database

It is that place to go to find out information about our progress on the project and, eventually, it will be one way to access it.

Join us at M-FED 2025, Microbialites: Formation, Evolution, Diagenesis!!

We will be hosting a listening session on the development of an open-source microbialites database at the M-FED conference, September 30-October 3, in Hannover, Germany.

Flyer describing the listening session we're planning for the M-FED 2025 conference in Hannover

We are a group of geoscientists working to create a database of microbialite biosignatures. This includes:

Morphological characteristics
Textural traits
Geochemical properties

The traces of microbial metabolic processes in the rock record are, to us, equivalent to primary sedimentary structures and/or trace fossils. They require thorough, non-genetic descriptions that we can then interpret in terms of physical, chemical and biological processes. For this reason, our database makes extensive use of Handbook for the Study of Microbialites (Grey & Awramik, 2020) , the first detailed non-genetic classification of microbialites to date.