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Climate change altering unique ecosystems

Climate change is causing more frequent flooding of the Wooramel River that leads into Shark Bay and threatening the unique “living rock fossils” that make Shark Bay a World Heritage site, according to researchers from the University of Western Australia, Curtin University and the CSIRO.

Shark Bay was added to the World Heritage List in 1991 because it contains living examples of the most ancient records of life on earth: stromatolites.

These stromatolites - rocky structures formed over millennia by blue-green algae or cyanobacteria - thrive in Shark Bay’s Hamelin Pool, where an unusual undersea landscape has created an environment twice as saline as normal seawater.

Professors from the Oceans Institute at UWA are concerned climate change is disturbing the natural system.

Read more at The University of Western Australia

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