An oasis of life...

may potentially exist in any water-filled pothole in canyon country. The sustained presence of warm water in some potholes will trigger the emergence of diminutive fairy shrimp, as seen below (click to enlarge):

The Bu bro and I stumbled upon this teeming population in a pothole at about 8,500 ft elevation (not the pothole pictured above) during explorations in 2008. How the heck did they get there?