Strange Mars Rocks Could Hold Clues to Ancient Life

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An international group of researchers reported their results after examining a section of Jezero Crater called the Bright Angel formation. The name was inspired by places in Grand Canyon National Park and refers to the pale color of the rocks in that region. Bright Angel lies within the Neretva Vallis channel and contains mudstones packed with oxidized iron (rust), phosphorus, sulfur, and most importantly, organic carbon. While organic carbon has been detected on Mars before, often from sources like meteorites, this particular mix of elements could have provided an energy supply for primitive organisms.

“When the rover entered Bright Angel and started measuring the compositions of the local rocks, the team was immediately struck by how different they were from what we had seen before,” said Tice, a geobiologist and astrobiologist in the Department of Geology and Geophysics. “They showed evidence of chemical cycling that organisms on Earth can take advantage of to produce energy. And when we looked even closer, we saw things that are easy to explain with early Martian life but very difficult to explain with only geological processes.”

https://scitechdaily.com/strange-mars-rocks-could-hold-clues-to-ancient-life/