Mars has always been quite intriguing to scientists. There has been evidence of the presence of water, methane in its atmosphere, organic chemistry of rock formation and now there might just be fossils.
A paper was published recently in the journal Astrobiology, which examined the photographs of the rock structures taken by the Mars Rover. These structures looked very similar to the structures on Earth created by microbes.
The lead author of the paper, Nora Norffke, is a geomicrobiologist in the Dominion University.
She has studied microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS) for over 20 years and has gone on to find a MISS which is 3.4 billion year old in Western Australia.
This particular outcrop found on Mars is believed to be older than 3.7 billion years.
This does not conclusively prove that there was life on Mars but it does take the search a step further adding to the already detected Methane on the planet.
Both Earth and Mars have shared a similar kind of early history. Mars might have been a lot warmer and wetter several billion years ago than the way it is now.
Gillespie Lake, a dried lakebed where the discovery was made, is now known to have experienced frequent flooding. This situation has been hypothetically considered to be ideal for the microbes to thrive.
Here on Earth shallow water bodies are known to contain microbes which trap and rearrange the sediments into some identifiable structures. These can be found all over the Earth in several different formations and types.