Alien hunter: NASA photo shows ventilation roof of underground Martian city

Scientists say honeycomb formations surrounding a strange-looking Martian crater recently photographed by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are eroded sand dunes, but UFO hunters know better.

Those are no dunes — they're the superstructure of a ventilation roof for an underground city inhabited by tiny aliens, theorizes Scott C. Waring, author of a blog called "UFO Sightings Daily."

They would have to be on the petite side as the crater — which NASA describes as a heavily eroded mesa in Noctis Labyrinthyuson, a region in the western end of Valles Marineris — is less than a half kilometer in width.

Waring compares the striated valleys of the labyrinthine formation to the filter-like maw of a baleen whale.

"You see that below the baleen structures is nothing but blackness, so I assume that this a ventilation roof of an underground city," he writes. "With an environment as harsh and unforgiving as Mars, you want to be underground where the temperature is much more tolerable day in and day out."

It's worth noting that Waring has previously posted about NASA images purportedly showing a squirrel, ground hog and monkey hanging out on the unforgiving surface of the Red Planet.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a small (0.4 kilometer) mesa, one of several surrounded by sand dunes in Noctis Labyrinthyus, an extensively fractured region on the western end of the Red Planet's Valles Marineris. The mesa resembles an ulcerated wound. less This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a small (0.4 kilometer) mesa, one of several surrounded by sand dunes in Noctis Labyrinthyus, an extensively fractured region on the western end of the ... more Photo: NASA Photo: NASA Image 1 of / 140 Caption Close Alien hunter: NASA photo shows ventilation roof of underground Martian city 1 / 140 Back to Gallery

NASA's boring — and far more plausible — explanation for the maze-like structure: "The layered mesa is probably comprised of sedimentary deposits that are being exhumed as it erodes."

Sand and boulders, folks. Baleen it or not.