Photo: Stephen Pearce
By Stephen Pearce
NASA? Astrobiology? British Columbia?
Believe it or not these all come together at beautiful Pavilion Lake in Marble Canyon Provincial Park – about a four-hour drive from Vancouver.
Pavilion Lake is one of the few places in the world that is home to colonies of microbialites; a rock or sedimentary deposit made of carbonate mud that is formed by microbes. It can occur regardless of sunlight and has been the subject of astrobiology research both NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. Some of the larger pillars in Pavilion Lake have been growing for thousands of years.
