Mushroom Pool, Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park

Mushroom Pool, Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park. Old roads were routed very near this feature as early as 1895, when the pool was noted by the strange “vegetable formation growing on it.” This observation turned out to be prophetical: Mushroom Pool is famous as the location where Thermus aquaticus strain YT-1 was discovered by Dr. Thomas Brock. Eventually study of this bacterium led to modern DNA sequencing technology. USGS photo by Lauren Harrison, 2018.