Turns out building blocks of Buckingham Palace (and a whole bunch of other buildings around the world) are made of 200 million year old microbes.
Oolitic limestone is almost completely made of millimetre-sized spheres of carbonate called ooids.
Co-researcher Dr Bob Burne from ANU said the new study found that ooids were made of concentric layers of mineralised microbes, debunking the popular “snowball theory” that ooids were formed by grains rolling on the seafloor and accumulating layers of sediment.
“We have proposed a radically different explanation for the origin of ooids that explains their definitive features,” said Dr Burne from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences. “Our research has highlighted yet another vital role that microbes play on Earth and in our lives.”
Different types of oolitic limestones have formed in all geological periods and have been found around the world – including in the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, the Bahamas, China and at Shark Bay in Western Australia. Dr Burne said humans had known about and used oolitic limestone since ancient times.
The reason they make such great building stones, is that they are strong and lightweight. Jurassic oolite in England has been used to construct a decent portion of the City of Bath, the British Museum and St Paul’s Cathedral. Mississippian oolite found in Indiana in the US has been used to build parts of the Pentagon in Virginia and parts of the Empire State Building in New York City.
“Our mathematical model explains the concentric accumulation of layers, and predicts a limiting size of ooids,” said Professor Murray Batchelor from the Research School of Physics and Engineering and the Mathematical Sciences Institute at ANU, who led the international team of researchers.
“We considered the problem theoretically using an approach inspired by a mathematical model developed in 1972 for the growth of some brain tumours.”
Professor Batchelor said the research findings could also help better understand the effects of past climate change.
Other researchers involved in the study were Professor Bruce Henry from the University of New South Wales, Dr Fei Li from Southwest Petroleum University in China and Professor Josef Paul from Geowissenschaftliches Zentrum der Universität in Germany.