Scientists from the University of Western Australia have discovered that strange microbial ancestors, the Asgard archaea, found in the microbial mats of Gathaagudu (Shark Bay). The discovery could help explain how complex life evolved on Earth. The team used the mats of Shark Bay as a "seed" to establish cultures of these ancient microbes, one of only four groups worldwide to achieve this feat. They also found an ancient Asgard archaeon and bacterium together, which could be a model of how life may have started on a primitive Earth before eukaryotes. The discovery was published in Current Biology and led to the name of the Malgana people, Nereumayae, a reference to the stromatolites being ancient relics of ancient ecosystems.