Gale Crater held a massive lake

[Aethon]

Reading through the above hearkens me back to the early days of the Opportunity rover. Many people were convinced that Oppy had imaged a Crinoid fossil. The feature was later destroyed by the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT).

http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/1/m/034/1M131201538EFF0500P2933M2M1.HTML

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinoid#mediaviewer/File:JurassicCrinoidsIsrael.JPG

Edited December 27, 2014 by Aethon

[Aethon]

Mmmm. Received Eight mastcam images this morn (Taken sol 843). Showing only the famous mastcam dead pixel that everyone thinks is a UFO, cosmic ray strikes and a grey background.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Aethon

[Aethon]

OK. Receiving images again. This one even has two of what the nutters will call UFO's, and some nice sedimentary mud-stone.

[KerikBalm]

Reading through the above hearkens me back to the early days of the Opportunity rover. Many people were convinced that Oppy had imaged a Crinoid fossil. The feature was later destroyed by the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT).

Yea... ummm.... I'm less that convinced....

But all those pictures showing sedimentary deposits.... where are the microbial mats?

Microbial mats on Earth would be covering places like that after life started, but before there was larger complex life that grazed them into (near) extinction.

It didn't take very long for such mats to evolve on Earth... if life started on mars, I'd think it would get there reasonably fast... but I doubt it had time to go beyond that stage and make them rare again (thought I'd love to happen accross a large macroscopic creature's fossil).

So... why are there layers and layers and layers of "mud" with no biofilms? You don't find that on earth after life started, but before about the cambrian.

[Aethon]

Potential signs of life ancient life in in MSL images?

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

Edited January 5, 2015 by Aethon

[KerikBalm]

I'm not an expert, but most of those pictures are not very convincing. I suppose it would be nice to get better close ups....

But figure 6 A does look intriguing.

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/ast.2014.1218

Enough to pique my interest.