And think of the emergent characteristics of bacterial mats: not much going on there.

Bright white bacterial mats line cracks in basaltic sheet flow.

The oldest fossils on Earth are 3.5 billion year old bacterial mats called stromatolites.

It's like those fossil bacterial mats they talk about, only further advanced.

Fossil bacterial mats, called stromatolites, are found throughout the Archaean after about 3,500mya.

Bacteria often attach to surfaces and form dense aggregations called biofilms or bacterial mats.

This environment supports large bacterial mats in the natural channels that drain the springs.

Some of the bacterial mats they investigated are up to 100 years old, they estimate.

Blackeye gobies have also been observed feeding directly on chemosynthetic bacterial mats.

There are cracks, methane seepages and bacterial mats which were probably created by the earthquake.