Scientists using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, in orbit above the Martian surface, have made a surprising discovery: an ancient dried-up lake bed that once held 10 times as much water as all of the Great Lakes combined. There's a possibility that this location saw the evolution of life billions of years ago, and may offer clues as to how life arose on our own planet.

Observations by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed that buried underneath the Eridania basin lay massive deposits of minerals. Further analysis of those minerals suggests that they were formed by volcanically heated underwater vents. Billions of years later, those volcanoes have gone extinct and the lake has dried up, but the mineral deposits remain.

"This site gives us a compelling story for a deep, long-lived sea and a deep-sea hydrothermal environment," says NASA's Paul Niles. "It is evocative of the deep-sea hydrothermal environments on Earth, similar to environments where life might be found on other worlds -- life that doesn't need a nice atmosphere or temperate surface, but just rocks, heat and water."

That makes the Eridania basin one of the more important regions on Mars to search for life. If we do find life there—or even traces of it—it could tell us more about what the first life may have looked like on Earth. Even if we never find life there, these results are still an invaluable look at the conditions that the first life formed in.

Even if we never find evidence that there's been life on Mars, this site can tell us about the type of environment where life may have begun on Earth," says Niles. "Volcanic activity combined with standing water provided conditions that were likely similar to conditions that existed on Earth at about the same time—when early life was evolving here."

Source: NASA JPL

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