Scientists Warn About 'False Fossils' Present on Mars
When looking for signs of life on Mars, we need to look out for 'false fossils' that may be abundant on the Red Planet, according to a new study.
Mars rover Perseverance lists, among its mission objectives, a first for red planet exploration. The robotic explorer has been tasked with searching for signs of ancient microbial life on the dusty, dry planet – tiny microfossils that would be evidence that Mars was once habitable.
That would indeed be an astounding, incredible discovery – but the new paper urges caution in interpreting what we find, in both this and future sources.
According to astrobiologist Sean McMahon of the University of Edinburgh and geobiologist Julie Cosmidis of the University of Oxford in the UK, scientists will have to keep an eye out for non-biological mineral deposits that look a heck of a lot like fossils.
In a new paper, the pair have outlined dozens of non-biological, or abiotic, processes that can produce pseudofossils – structures that look like fossils of microscopic organisms like those that may have once existed on Mars. ...
"For every type of fossil out there, there is at least one non-biological process that creates very similar things, so there is a real need to improve our understanding of how these form."
This notion is not exactly surprising. Mars is an absolute feast for pareidolia and conspiracies. All you need is one funny-looking rock and the rumors run riot. ...
"We have been fooled by life-mimicking processes in the past," Cosmidis said.
"On many occasions, objects that looked like fossil microbes were described in ancient rocks on Earth and even in meteorites from Mars, but after deeper examination they turned out to have non-biological origins. This article is a cautionary tale in which we call for further research on life-mimicking processes in the context of Mars, so that we avoid falling into the same traps over and over again." ...