Boffins used infrared light beams from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to study rocks on the Nili Fossae area of the red planet and found that they contain similar properties as the Pilbara rocks in Australia, including carbonate.
This is formed from the shells and bodies of dead animals.
The Pilbara rocks are used by scientists as a kind of prism to study life on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. This is partly because they also contain another ‘biomarker’ known as ‘stromatolites’, which are formed by ancient microbes.
Scientists hope that these will also be found on the Mars rocks, but even if they aren’t the similarities between the two sets of rocks have got the scientific community excited.
One of the researchers, Dr Adrian Brown, whose findings have been published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, told BBC News that the ‘hydrothermal’ processes that caused the microbes to be preserved in Australia could have happened on Mars, too.
He said: ‘We suggest that the associated hydrothermal activity would have provided sufficient energy for biological activity on early Mars at Nili Fossae.
‘Furthermore, in the article we discuss the potential of the Archean volcanics of the East Pilbara region of Western Australia as an analog for the Nochian Nili Fossae on Mars.
‘They indicate that biomarkers or evidence of living organisms, if produced at Nili, could have been preserved, as they have been in the North Pole Dome region of the Pilbara craton.'
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/836661-mars-site-may-hold-buried-life
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