Desert Varish - In The Rough
UNM Scanning Electron Microscope Images by M. Spilde and P. Boston
(Click on an Image for a Larger Version)

These were all done on simply vacuum dried specimens. It hasn't rained on these guys for many months. Click Here for images of the ones that were soaked in water for 3 hours, let hang out for two days, fixed in glutaraldehyde, and then dried.
Crystals of goetthite (replacement psudomorphs of pyrite) on Abo Sandstone. Notice small fuzzy dark things in joints of crystals.	Coated colonies closer, with large live algal cell.
Fossil colony surface with shriveled live (recently, but now formerly!) algal cell. We had to work at low voltage with this one so the resolution isn't great.	Fuzzy things closer, they are silicified FeOxide coated colonies, either bacterial, or microcolonial fungi. They are fossils, not alive, we think.
Colonies even closer with imprint where one colony has pinged off the surface.	Major Varnish Metropolitan Area, every pit has its colony.
Tiny bacterial colony all by its lonesome on desert varnish surface.	The little guys closer. Res is poor because it kept charging and I had to cut the voltage. These cells are pretty small ... about 0.3-0.4 micron each.
Colony in the process of being silicified and impregnated with Fe and Mn. This structure has a high organic carbon signal but also lots of silicate and some Fe and Mn. This looks very much like the beautiful fossil colonies on the Abo Sandstone, but it's still alive.	The colony to the left, up close. So much charging, I couldn't get it to hold still and it smeared, but it's still seeable.
One of the neighbors, these guys are alive, not preserved.	Crowded neighborhood in a crack.
Another neighbor, filamentous and imbedded in biofilm at both ends.	Biofilm goo in crack, lots of organic carbon in the EDS graph.