Fossils

Fossils on Mars ?

Let's assume that the ancestors of current Martian microbes were born in Mars over 4 billion years ago as Steven Benner proposes. And lets assume that Mars had good conditions for life in beginning of history of Mars as Curiosity science team tells, with lead of John Grotzinger, in 9th of December 2013 publications in Science magazine. Why the evolution would have stopped to level of microbes? Isn't it possible that evolution would have proceeded much further in planet Mars?

Curiosity is moving on ancient sea floor of Mars. Very interesting images can be found on Curiosity's raw image archives: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ . Select Mast camera and search the images (open Full resolution images ):

Sol 186
Mastcam: Right 2013-02-13 07:39:13 UTC http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00186/mcam/0186MR0927120000E1_DXXX.jpg

Mastcam: Right 2013-02-13 07:38:27 UTC http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00186/mcam/0186MR0927121000E1_DXXX.jpg

Sol 109
Mastcam: Right 2012-11-25 23:09:11 UTC http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00109/mcam/0109MR0684022000E1_DXXX.jpg

Mastcam: Right 2012-11-25 23:09:56 UTC http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00109/mcam/0109MR0684021000E1_DXXX.jpg

It is reasonable that You go and fetch the original images from Curiosity archive, so that You can see that these pictures are real, not faked. Store the pictures to your computer so that you can zoom them.

Here is combined picture of the above mentioned Curiosity picture, Sol 186, John Klein site, images 0186MR0927120000E1_DXXX and 0186MR0927121000E1_DXXX :

Curiosity Sol 109, images 0109MR0684022000E1_DXXX and 0109MR0684021000E1_DXXX:

When you look at Curiosity pictures of objects in Sol-186 and Sol-109, You very fast realize that: "Here I see animal bones of ancient life". Pictures are so clear and sharp that is difficult to deny what you see and say: "Random processes of nature can produce this kind of shapes to stones". And when you accept that here are animal fossils on planet Mars, the consequences are remarkable. It means that conditions in Mars have been for very long time good for life to evolve from RNA and DNA to microbes and further to multicellular life like plants and animals.

I understand that this is a bold statement. But on the other hand it is a natural consequence of the evolution in a planet having good conditions for life and microbial life in the beginning. When did the environment in Mars become worse for life? Currently the timing of geological periods of Mars is not yet fixed as You can read from blogs by Emily Lakdawalla in Planetary Society: 5-12-2013 Mars' chemical history: Phyllosian, Theiikian, Siderikian, oh my . And 25-10-2013 Noachian, Hesperian, and Amazonian, oh my! - Mars' Geologic Time Scale .

In some estimates Mars was habitable maybe only for 300 million years. But a recent study shows that Mars had liquid water on surface just 500 000 years ago: T.de Haas 2015, Earth-like aqueous debris-flow activity on Mars at high orbital obliquity in the last million years.

Interesting question also is that how long time evolution needs to develop multicellular life ? In Earth it took about 2 billion years before this transition happened. Given suitable conditions in a planet, can evolution proceed faster? Can the high phosphorus content of Mars, 5-10 times compared to Earth, be one of the key factors?

Year 2015 study with Keck, VLT and NASA infrared telescopes of water-deuterium ratio on Mars (ref.222), shows that Mars had oceans at least for 1.5 billion years, long enough for life to evolve: Universe today: Bob King,March 2015, Mars Loses an Ocean But Gains the Potential for Life .

Instead of Benners theory of life born on Mars the panspermia theory by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe could explain the observations from Mars maybe even better. That would take maybe one billion years or more away from time scale of emergence of life: microbes based on same DNA would be available everywhere in our solar system when planetary bodies cooled enough.

Below is combined picture of Sol 173 and 186 Mast camera pictures. It is located left from Sol-186 picture. In this picture You see also the white objects presented above(white arrows) and more possible pieces of fossils (yellow arrows). Images 0173MR0926138000E1_DXXX, 0173MR0926139000E1_DXXX, 0173MR0926139000E1_DXXX, 0173MR0926100000E1_DXXX, 0186MR0927120000E1_DXXX.

Below is view from place, where sol 186 and 173 pictures(yellow arrows) were taken. Curiosity spent 3 weeks investigating this area, which is named John Klein. From this image it is possible to figure out the scale of the Sol-186 and 173 fossils, if you compare it to Curiosity wheel size. The size of the fossil bones may be 5-10 centimeters. This image is part of famous Curiosity self portray (PIA16763). I have embedded to this image two originals from archive (0177MH0226000019E1_DXXX and 0177MH0226000043E1_DXXX) , for which natural colors are set with Gimp automatic white balancing. The sky is blue.

These same kinds of objects resembling fossils can be found more especially from Curiosity Sol-107 and Sol-109 Mast camera archives. Below is some of them. Sol 173 and 109 images are here again to make comparison easier.

Fossils? Sol 107, 64. Images 0107MR0682050000E1_DXXX and 0064MR0285069000E1_DXXX .

Fossils? Sol 107, 109. Images 0107MR0682042000E1_DXXX, 0109MR0684015000E1_DXXX and 0109MR0684013000E1_DXXX.

Fossil? Sol 186

In case of Sol 303 below, the negative fossils can be considered. Sol 514 has been named as Harrison.

In Curiosity Sol-1922 image the possibility for a trace fossil is discussed in article Leonard David, Barry DiGregorio, January 2018: Curiosity Mars Rover Investigates Eye-catching, Odd Features . DiGregorio has written a book about this: Discovery on Vera Rubin ridge: Trace fossils on Mars? . The book has been reviewed by former NASA Viking Lander biologist Gilbert V. Levin.

Esperance

Opportunity images of Sol-3230 and Sol-3262 (28.3.2013) of object called Esperance is worth of investigating. Esperance is located at Endeavour crater, in place named Matijevic Hill. Opportunity spent two months investigating Esperance. See NASA article about it: Guy Webster, may 2013: Mars Rover Opportunity Examines Clay Clues in Rock . The elements of Esperance differ from what Opportunity had analyzed in past 9 years. Esperance has more aluminum and silica and less calcium and iron.

Esperance is a little strange object.Esperance has quite special symmetric and geometric shapes. I recommend You to study carefully the high resolution picture of Esperance. You will notice several amazing things. See also this analysis of Esperance Chemistry by Opportunity science team: B. C. Clark 2014: Espérance: Extreme aqueous alteration in fracture fills and coatings at Matijevic Hill, Mars . In chapter Astrobiological Significance of the article the litho-bionts are organisms which are growing on rock surfaces, like Fungi and Lichens.

In picture below the 2 gray pictures on left are with Microscopic imager of area in middle of image above right. The image left looks like fossilized plant leave or algae. In the image on middle Opportunity has grinded this object. After grinding there is something like plant stem cut from middle

Esperance was investigated a record time, 60 days. The Opportunity principal investigator, Steve Squyres said: Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking.

Fossil forest?

I classify images T-1 to T-12 below to same class. If Mars had life, was there something like trees? Images T-2 and T3 are of same objects from different angles. Both in T-2 and T-3 there is two objects. The T2, T6, T10 and T11 objects have similar surface textures. The T1 and T3 interior structures have similarities. The T-7 Sol 396 objects have interesting surface texture, which is worth of checking in high resolution image. If T-9 would be a tree fossil, it has about 17 yearly growth rings, meaning it reached age of 17 martian years, which is 32 earth years. Try to run internet image search 'fossil tree' to see that corresponding Earth tree fossils have striking similarities compared to T-1..T-9 objects. Also check Fossil tree web-page by Ph.D. Ian West: The Purbeck Fossil Forest - 2: The Trees . Sol 1101 right corner image: In high resolution image see the repeated pattern on right side of the object and compare it to patterns of T-2 and T-6. Alternative possibility for T-7 and T-8 is thrombolite . The T-12 object, Opportunity Sol 4416, was re-examined closely at Sol 4429 and 4430 (July 2016).

It has been pointed out by S.Blomqvist(Finland) that on rain forests of Earth at equator, trees do not produce yearly rings. The rings are produced at latitudes where there are seasonal changes: growth period, and resting period. The tilt of Mars's rotational axis is currently 25 degrees. The southern winters on Mars are cold since then Mars is 19% further away from Sun than on southern summer. The location of Spirit Mars rover is 15 degrees south. The location of Curiosity is 5 degrees south. Opportunity is 2 degrees south. So the seasonal changes in Spirit site, Gusev crater, are larger than in Curiosity site, Gale crater.

Earlier in history of Mars, the axis tilt may have been larger than 25 degrees( Universe today 2008, Fraser Cain Mars Tilt ). This would increase the seasonal effect. Blomqvist has developed methods to perform age measurements of tree samples, based on statistical analysis of the variations in yearly growth rings.

Fossil sea shells?

The Sol 132, 551, 3, 692, 1032, 1280 objects resemble fossilized sea shells