Mammoth Hot Springs Area
Monday, June 15, 1998

Yellowstone has thousands of hot springs. Sometimes, the hot water coming up from below dissolves minerals, including silica, which forms interesting shapes called terraces. Harrison thinks they look like stairs. The temperature of the hots springs is sometimes hotter than boiling water, or over 200 degrees farenheit. There are even things that live in the hot springs, and they love it. They are algea that are called thermophiles, because they like heat.

This picture is of Mammoth Hot Springs' Minerva Terrace. It is a pretty, colorful place. The colors are made by bacteria that live there. There are many types of thermobacteria in Yellowstone, but the most common is cyanobacteria, or algea.

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Here is a picture of a bison among the burned pines. In 1988 there were some great fires in west Yellowstone.

Observing the cyanobacteria up close. Bacteria like these were probably the first living things on the earth when there was nothing but rocks and water. These bacteria first showed up about three and a half billion years ago, when the earth was still very young. Scientists think that there was almost no atmosphere then, and the bacteria helped to make the atmosphere we have today.

The got really bad, and we were caught in a downpour going back to our LV. Later that day it started to snow! We were unable to finish our trip to Tower Falls that day.

We saw some deer in the Mammoth area.

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At night we watched a movie called "My Side of the Mountain." It was about a boy that was 11 years old who went into the mountains to live on his own and study algea in its natural habitat. He wanted to become a naturalist like Thoreau.

Resources
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Links
Books, CDs, Videos

Yellowstones Geysers Hot Springs and Fumaroles (Field Guide) by Carl Schreier
A small pocket field guide to the geothermal attractions at Yellowstone. Gives good background, statistics, how to estimate eruption intervals and such.

coverGuide to Microlife
by Kenneth G. Rainis, Bruce J. Russell
This is a great, concise guide to microorganisms of all kinds. We used it as a sort of field guide to identify some of the bacteria and things that we found in the hotsprings in Yellowstone.

 


Grow your own Triops!

We did just that on our Natural History Tour! Just add water and watch these prehistoric creatures grow right before your eyes. They lasted a couple of weeks, even in our LV!

My Side of the Mountain.
An 11 year old boy becomes enamoured with the stories of Henry David Thoreau, and wants to become a true naturalist. He sets out to the wilderness to live on his own for a year. This is the story of this trials, his friends (both human and animal) and his worried family.

More Reiser Family Field Trips

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