Yellowstone: Life in Hard Places

The geysers, mud pots, fumaroles and thermal springs that attract millions of visitors to Yellowstone National Park every year also attract a growing number of scientists.

The brilliant yellow, orange and red hues that tinge some of the hot springs are microbes that live in these boiling hot environments. Organisms that are adapted to live under extreme conditions of heat, cold, pressure, depth or chemical environment are called extremophiles.

Scientists are interested in studying extremophiles because these organisms live in conditions that are known to exist on other planets, so our search for understanding the life forms we might find on Mars can begin in our own backyard.

For more on extremophiles in Yellowstone and elsewhere, click here.

Photo of Old Faithful by the author.

Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park, centered in the northwest corner of Wyoming, was America’s first national park, established in 1872, but the story of Yellowstone’s current landscape starts just over 2 million years ago with a series of terrific volcanic eruptions that triggered the collapse of the volcanoes and formation of calderas—large, basin-like depressions.

Yellowstone Lake occupies the youngest caldera that formed in the last big eruption about 600,000 years ago. The volcanic activity and geothermal features in Yellowstone are attributed to the presence of a hot spot, or upwelling of hot mantle material deep below the park, and as long as that subterranean heat source lasts, Yellowstone’s landscape will continue to evolve.

Photo: Yellowstone geyser. Photo by the author.