Yellowstone National Park Hotsprings In one of my lab's projects, we're trying to understand how life evolved on our planet. We think that the environment that life evolved in was very hot, and similar to the conditions in the Yellowstone National Park Hotsprings. They are so hot that photosynthesis can't happen (it quits at about 56 degrees centigrade), so it's a really good analog, because photosynthesis evolved quite late in the history of our planet. We believe the closest thing to what life was like back then is in those springs. We've been able to identify the most primitive form of bacteria there.

		This is a microbial mat from the Yellowstone Hotsprings. We used to think that this was just slime on the end of the pool and that it wasn't alive, but in fact it's a very complex ecosystem, as complex as any large city would be. There are probably billions and billions of bacteria there.
a microbial mat

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