After the findings of traces of water in the Martian soil and methane present in the red planet’s atmosphere, researchers have hypothesized something bigger and strange than ever before, the fact that there may be fossils present on Mars.
The findings were published in the journal of Astrobiology. The paper states that rocks on Mars that were photographed by NASA’s rover Curiosity were examined and was found that they were quite similar to structures found on Earth that were once created due to microbes.
Lead author Nora Noffke, a geomicrobiologist from Old Dominion University who has studied microbially induced sedimentary structures MISS on Earth for almost 20 years hypothesized that the outcrop is almost 3.7 billion years old.
It’s difficult to say that this is proof of life on the red planet, but nonetheless this research takes the search for life on Mars to the next level, especially because of the recent finding that methane and other organic molecules are prevalent there.
Mars and Earth had a lot of in common but there are theories that at one time Mars was a warmer and wetter planet than Earth, probably billions of years ago, but the site of this finding, Gillespie Lake, a dried lakebed once endured seasonal flooding, which is hypothetically the perfect environment for microbes to thrive.
Noffke also states that this is my hypothesis and I have gathered a lot of evidence to support it, but I do think that the evidence presented is not a lot and further evidence must be provided to support this hypothesis.
