Possible Fossil On Mars At The Foot of Mount Shar

Obvious rock is a rock.......just kidding, I just wanted to be that guy for a second.

I believe mars very well may have been bustling with life in the ancient past and may even have top secret structures today. Maybe with humans, extraterrestrials, or both.

Good find, that certainly does look like it could be a fossil.

a reply to: audubon

Thanks for the information.

From what I could see it's only a hypothesis, not a confirmed thing.

a reply to: ArMaP

""Snowball Earth" Confirmed: Ice Covered Equator"

news.nationalgeographic.com...

The article points out that the snow and ice wouldn't have been absolutely pure, due to volcanic emissions, but that's just a detail.

a reply to: audubon

It also says:

That some organisms survived—and even branched off into new species—during the Sturtian glaciation adds credence to the idea that snowball Earth harbored open-water refuges, or at least cracks in the ice, Macdonald said.

originally posted by: ArMaP
a reply to: audubon

It also says:

That some organisms survived—and even branched off into new species—during the Sturtian glaciation adds credence to the idea that snowball Earth harbored open-water refuges, or at least cracks in the ice, Macdonald said.

This doesn't contradict anything I've posted, so I'm not sure what point you're making (please don't interpret that in a confrontational way). As I said, life was crushed right into the margins, and sprang back. If you're thinking that I was implying that life was destroyed and didn't do anything until the snowball Earth period ended, as though coming out of hibernation, that's a mistaken observation: it's not actually possible to stop things evolving, but the slowness of the evolution that took place during the snowball Earth is remarkable - most of the organisms were essentially the same afterward as they had been before.

And the 'organisms' that are being referred to in that quote are bacteria and a few very small worms (a few cms long). We know they survived, because we are here - and if they hadn't we wouldn't be here. What McDonald is speculating about in the above quote is the environment in which they survived. And we don't know much about what didn't survive, because the conditions were unsuitable for fossilisation.

studentresearch.wcp.muohio.edu...

The carbon isotopes in the Neoproterozoic rocks of Namibia record a different situation. Just before the glacial deposits, the amount of carbon 13 plummets to levels equivalent to the volcanic source, a drop we think records decreasing biological productivity as ice encrusted the oceans at high latitudes and the earth teetered on the edge of a runaway freeze.

This event is probably best illustrated by the parallel of a radio station fading so completely that it can't be heard over the background white noise of normal static. It's not detectable in any meaningful sense any more. This sudden disappearance of carbon 13 includes the byproducts of photosynthesis, meaning that life dependent on sunlight either almost vanished or completely vanished.

Once the oceans iced over completely, productivity would have essentially ceased, but no carbon record of this time interval exists because calcium carbonate could not have formed in an ice-covered ocean. This drop in carbon 13 persists through the cap carbonates atop the glacial deposits and then gradually rebounds to higher levels of carbon 13 several hundred meters above, presumably recording the recovery of life at the end of the hothouse period. Abrupt variation in this carbon isotope record shows up in carbonate rocks that represent other times of mass extinction, but none are as large or as long-lived. Even the meteorite impact that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago did not bring about such a prolonged collapse in biological activity.

The fossil record is therefore incomplete and all we know is that some organisms survived, and they were a tiny fraction of the original populations. The best explanation is that they carried on living around oceanic hydrothermal vents, which we know still goes on today, and possibly around features at higher elevations that would normally be geysers if the land wasn't ice-locked, where bubbles of warm water would provide a refuge deep under the ice. There might, as McDonald says, have been some ice-free cracks in the ocean, but they obviously couldn't exist for long - it was as cold at the equator then as it is at the South Pole now. We'll never know exactly what snowball Earth looked like.

But the main thing is that we know from the carbon 13 content of rocks from this period that the early biosphere was crushed to a point where we can hardly infer its existence today. Basically, the Earth stopped breathing.

a reply to: LABTECH767

MARS still receives periodic impact's from the asteroid belt

Speaking of periodic impacts - do you realise that your sentences are grotesquely long, grammatically improper & really annoying to read? You're supposed to punctuate your thoughts with impactful periods, commas & the like...

With that said, once I get past the absurd sentence structure, I agree with many of your points. The reason I highlight your grammatical treason, is that it really distracts the reader from paying close attention to what you're actually trying to say. Maybe have a go at reducing the length of your sentences? I suppose you may be stuck in a comfortable rut, but by breaking out of that you will have a much easier time of conveying your thoughts to others in a way that doesn't cause annoyance/distraction, or which may indeed be affecting their perception of your intellect..

originally posted by: audubon
If you're thinking that I was implying that life was destroyed and didn't do anything until the snowball Earth period ended, as though coming out of hibernation, that's a mistaken observation:

I was, I forgot that you had said "except some very simple extremophile creatures clustered around a very limited number of deep-ocean volcanic vents".

originally posted by: ArMaP

originally posted by: audubon
If you're thinking that I was implying that life was destroyed and didn't do anything until the snowball Earth period ended, as though coming out of hibernation, that's a mistaken observation:

I was, I forgot that you had said "except some very simple extremophile creatures clustered around a very limited number of deep-ocean volcanic vents".

Ah, I knew there had to be a miscommunication somewhere but couldn't identify where. I'll stop labouring the point now, promise!

originally posted by: stonerwilliam
Interesting picture of a Snake in that photo and it looks alive

www.chron.com...

I have a crop of a pic with a snake in it too.

Also a dried up eel. lol.

I'm serious. I'll have to take time to load up the pics to ATS, which is a pita.

originally posted by: FlyInTheOintment
a reply to: LABTECH767

MARS still receives periodic impact's from the asteroid belt

Speaking of periodic impacts - do you realise that your sentences are grotesquely long, grammatically improper & really annoying to read? You're supposed to punctuate your thoughts with impactful periods, commas & the like...

With that said, once I get past the absurd sentence structure, I agree with many of your points. The reason I highlight your grammatical treason, is that it really distracts the reader from paying close attention to what you're actually trying to say. Maybe have a go at reducing the length of your sentences? I suppose you may be stuck in a comfortable rut, but by breaking out of that you will have a much easier time of conveying your thoughts to others in a way that doesn't cause annoyance/distraction, or which may indeed be affecting their perception of your intellect..

Ahh just made me smile, my Dongle got fried as I was using mobile internet, I now have a temporary hard connection so have been able to get back online for now so sorry for the late reply and my gramma, hey have a look at this thread should make you chuckle as well.
www.abovetopsecret.com...