Similarity between martian sedimentary deposits and terrestrial microbial mats

http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/potential-signs-ancient-life-mars-rover-photos/

by Tossrock • 12 years ago

30 3 12 years ago

jofer2• 12 years ago

Definitely interesting and a neat paper, but please keep in mind that this is _very_ speculative. (However, the authors do a nice job of stating that, and give plenty of specific tests that could be performed by Curosity or a similar rover.)

They're keying in on the top surface, but there's no strong evidence that it's a "clean" bedding plane. You get very similar structures from normal weathering. The authors make a few reasonable arguments to support the idea that there's no significant weathering, but I'm not convinced.

Ignoring geochemical signatures for the moment, a great visual test would be to take a closer look at the morphology of the laminae they mention. Stromatolitic laminations are fairly distinctive.

Caveat: I'm a geologist, but not in astrobiology.

Tossrock• 12 years ago

Do you have a link to the actual paper? I couldn't find it, somehow.

jofer2• 12 years ago

It's linked in the writeup, though the link is not terribly obvious: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/ast.2014.1218

Similarity between martian sedimentary deposits and terrestrial microbial mats

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