

Similarity between martian sedimentary deposits and terrestrial microbial mats - Tossrock
http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/potential-signs-ancient-life-mars-rover-photos/

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jofer
Definitely interesting and a neat paper, but please keep in mind that this is
_very_ speculative. (However, the authors do a nice job of stating that, and
give plenty of specific tests that could be performed by Curosity or a similar
rover.)

They're keying in on the top surface, but there's no strong evidence that it's
a "clean" bedding plane. You get very similar structures from normal
weathering. The authors make a few reasonable arguments to support the idea
that there's no significant weathering, but I'm not convinced.

Ignoring geochemical signatures for the moment, a great visual test would be
to take a closer look at the morphology of the laminae they mention.
Stromatolitic laminations are fairly distinctive.

Caveat: I'm a geologist, but not in astrobiology.

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Tossrock
Do you have a link to the actual paper? I couldn't find it, somehow.

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jofer
It's linked in the writeup, though the link is not terribly obvious:
[http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/ast.2014.1218](http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/ast.2014.1218)

