Fossilized stromatolites
(A) formed around deep-sea vents.
(B) resemble structures formed by bacterial communities that are found today in some shallow marine bays.
(C) provide evidence that plants moved onto land in the company of fungi around 500 million years ago.
(D) contain the first undisputed fossils of eukaryotes.

Extant stromatolites represent real "living fossils" for they are decendents of ancient forms that are associated with one of the first living forms on earth. Particularly, stromatolites are real bacteria communities where the autotrophic organism of the community are represented by cyanobacteria, which live along with heterotrophic bacteria. This clearly indicates that fossilized stromatolites points to bacteria (prokaryotes) as the first living things on earth (dated with not less than 3.5 billion year old)

Nowadays, stromatolites with cyanobacteria allows to reconstruct and understand fossilized forms. These current structures live in shallow marines ambients (e.g. Australia) but also in continental salt flats (e.g. Argentina) where few others bacteria can survive to these extreme conditions (high light exposure and salt concentration).