Parts of the Lassen Volcanic National Park in California’s Cascade Range resemble the gateway to a hellish underworld, with pools of boiling water and bubbling mud where almost nothing can live, due to scalding temperatures that can reach a blistering 464 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s enough to kill a human, obviously, which rangers and ample signage helpfully point out to visitors throughout the park. And yet: a team of scientists in America and Europe have discovered one remarkable organism that can survive and even thrive in these hellish waters: a tiny single-cell “fire amoeba.”

This humble critter, a gooey-looking blobunder the microscope, has set a “new record for the upper temperature limit” for all complex organisms on Earth because it can divide at a burning-hot 145.4 degrees Fahre

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