Two representative Precambrian examples, ~850 Ma in age, are shown in Fig. 4a through f: a spirally coiled specimen (Helioconema funiculum, Fig. 4a and NVP-HSP990 in vivo b),
similar to species of the Thiazovivin clinical trial modern oscillatoriacean genus Spirulina; and a tapering cellular trichome (Cephalophytarion laticellulosum, Fig. 4c through f) that resembles the modern cyanobacterium Oscillatoria amoenum. The organismal form and cellular structure of such specimens, traditionally illustrated by photomicrographic montages (e.g., Fig. 4a and c), can be appreciably better documented by use of confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), a technique check details only recently introduced to Precambrian studies (Schopf et al. 2006). Compare, for example, the optical image of the spirally coiled specimen (Fig. 4a) with its CLSM image (Fig. 4b), and the optical image of the tapering trichome, artificially flattened in the photomontage (Fig. 4c), with the corresponding CLSM images (Fig. 4d
and e) that show the specimen to plunge steeply into the thin rock slice (a petrographic thin section) in which it is embedded. A second newly introduced technique, Raman imagery (Schopf et al. 2005), can be used to document, in three BCKDHB dimensions (Schopf and Kudryavtsev 2005), the chemical composition of such rock-embedded fossils and that
of their embedding matrix, for the tapering trichome, showing that the walls of its terminal cells are composed of carbonaceous kerogen and that the cells themselves are permineralized by quartz (Fig. 4f). Fig. 4 Fossil oscillatoriacean cyanobacteria (a through f) in petrographic thin sections of stromatolitic chert from the ~850-Ma-old Bitter Springs Formation of central Australia; modern oscillatoriaceans (g and h) compared with a morphologically similar fossil trichome (i through q) in a thin section of a cherty stromatolite from the ~775 Ma-old Chichkan Formation of southern Kazakhstan; and pustular laminae, formed by colonies of entophysalidacean cyanobacteria, in a thin section of stromatolitic chert from the ~2,100-Ma-old Kasegalik Formation of the Belcher Islands, Canada. a, b Optical montage (a), composed of five photomicrographs (denoted by the white lines), and a CLSM image (b) of Heliconema, a spirally coiled oscillatoriacean similar to modern Spirulina.