page_title: Microbialite
section_title: Classification
hierarchical_section_title: Microbialite / Classification
caption_attribution_description: English: Plot about classification of microbialite
context_page_description: Microbialite is a rock or benthic sedimentary deposit made of carbonate mud that is formed with the mediation of microbes. The constituent carbonate mud is a type of automicrite, or authigenic carbonate mud, and therefore it precipitates in situ instead of being transported and deposited. Been formed in situ, a microbialite can be seen as a type of boundstone where reef builders are microbes, and precipitation of carbonate is biotically induced instead of forming tests, shells or skeletons. Bacteria can precipitate carbonate both in shallow and in deep water and so microbialites can form regardless of the sun light.
  Microbialites were very important to the formation of Precambrian and Phanerozoic limestones in many different environments, marine and not. The best age for stromatolites was from 2800 Ma to 1000 Ma where stromatolites were the main constituents of carbonate platforms
context_section_description: Microbialites can have three different fabrics: 
  Stromatolitic: microbialite layered, laminated or agglutinated to form a stromatolite.
  Thrombolitic: microbialite with a clotted peloidal fabric if observed with a petrographic microscope. The density of peloids is variable. At the scale of the hand sample, the rock shows a dendritic fabric, and can be named thrombolite.
  Leiolitic: a microbialite with no layering nor clotted peloidal fabric. It is only made of a dense automicrite.
caption: Classification of microbialites (redrawn and simplified from Schmid, 1996[2]).
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