How to Use extremophile in a Sentence

extremophile

noun
  • These organisms are known as extremophiles.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Apr. 2026
  • In the future, the team hopes to explore how extremophiles evolve within microwaves over time.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Aug. 2024
  • Hof isn’t the only living extremophile who harnesses this sort of focus.
    — James Hamblin, The Atlantic, 9 June 2017
  • But nothing else matches the extremophiles, animals like the dinosaur shrimp and fairy shrimp, that can lay dormant for decades.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 7 Sep. 2023
  • These extremophiles can also be found in highly salty or highly acidic environments.
    — Robin George Andrews, New York Times, 1 Nov. 2019
  • The base for all cells on Earth, even for the extremophiles living in nitrogen-heavy environments, is water.
    — Shannon Stirone, Popular Mechanics, 28 July 2017
  • These tiny creatures are extremophiles, adapted for life in environments that would kill most other organisms.
    — Tom Hawking, Popular Science, 24 Oct. 2024
  • Some organisms—extremophiles—have adapted to live life in these severe environments.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 15 Apr. 2023
  • Some organisms—extremophiles—have adapted to live life in these severe environments.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 15 Apr. 2023
  • But one of the new nematodes from the genus Auanema did reproduce in the lab, which will provide researchers a new model extremophile to work with.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 1 Oct. 2019
  • Among the hundreds the team has logged are many extremophiles, which fill marginal niches on Earth but may be a dominant life form on an exoplanet.
    — Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, 1 Nov. 2017
  • Any microbial life native to Mars could have evolved to resist the toxic element(s) in the planet's regolith, as extremophiles do here on Earth.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 4 Mar. 2026
  • On Earth, some methanogens are extremophiles—known to live deep in the ocean at hydrothermal vents, surviving on the intense heat and chemicals released.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 1 Mar. 2018
  • And where there’s water and warmth, there will be extremophiles—tough little creatures that can thrive in desolate wastelands and temperatures that dip below zero.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 31 Jan. 2011
  • And studies of extremophiles, microbes that thrive in inhospitable environments on Earth, suggest life can spring up in unlikely places.
    — Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, 1 Nov. 2017
  • And so some of these extremophiles are not metabolizing organic material.
    — quantamagazine.org, 26 Sep. 2024
  • Given tardigrades’ reputation as an extremophile, researchers are interested in plumbing their genome for the secrets to their resilience.
    — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 20 Sep. 2016
  • The Patagonian ice dragon is what scientists call an extremophile, or an organism that can live in extreme environments.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 23 July 2022
  • Water bears aren’t actually extremophiles, more extremo-tolerant.
    — Katie Liu, Discover Magazine, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Many of these organisms are extremophiles, given their ability to survive and thrive in normally inhospitable environments.
    — Devika Rao, TheWeek, 9 Jan. 2026
  • What the alien soil needs is some Martian fertilizer, maybe made by adding extremophiles to it – hardy microbes imported from Earth that can survive even the harshest conditions.
    — Sven Bilén, Discover Magazine, 17 July 2024
  • On Earth, researchers have found all types of extremophile organisms with the ability to survive under intense heat and pressure, in the presence of acid, without water and even inside rocks.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 6 July 2017
  • On Earth, researchers have found all types of extremophile organisms with the ability to survive under intense heat and pressure, in the presence of acid, without water and even inside rocks.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 7 July 2017
  • Even some Earth-dwelling extremophiles—organisms that live in exceptionally harsh conditions—are poorly understood.
    — Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 July 2023
  • Psammophiles themselves are examples of extremophiles, organisms that love extreme environments.
    — Frances Vinall, Washington Post, 2 June 2023
  • Antarctica also offers a unique opportunity to study extremophiles—organisms that thrive in extreme environments.
    — Shelli Brunswick, Forbes, 11 Oct. 2024
  • One major factor that many extremophiles share is their ability to tolerate or even feed off of methane instead of oxygen or carbon dioxide, like methanotrophs, which are bacteria that eat methane and release oxygen as a byproduct.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 21 Nov. 2019
  • But in 2010, researchers confirmed the rusticles were created by a new extremophile bacteria, Halomonas titanicae, which is gobbling up the hull.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 22 Aug. 2019
  • But politicians did not always favor pursuit of such extraterrestrials, extremophile and/or intelligent and/or otherwise.
    — Sarah Scoles, WIRED, 5 June 2019
  • Orphan’s work with extremophiles — organisms that survive under extreme conditions like high pressure or a complete lack of sunlight — could shed light on the origins of life on Earth and the potential for life on other worlds, among other things.
    — Los Angeles Times, 29 Apr. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'extremophile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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