Fossilized Spines and Vertebrae of Big Creatures in Curiosity Sol 109!

Originally posted by Cohort
I have not seen a new report as of yet, Do you know of one?

No.

reply to post by netwarrior

Going against it, the supposed vertebra lack any uniformity, other than their vague shape and height. The front one is even pyramidal in structure, whereas the back crests are square columnar. Still, this is life on another frickin' planet so I'll give you that one. I'm fairly shocked that IF (that's a big if) thats what this is, that it looks so much like ancient Earth life. Is it possible that Mars was an ancient geoengineering project gone wrong?

Think of the human spine, though---the entire human spinal column including the sacrum and coccyx. C1 is shaped completely differently from the rest of the vertebrae, and there are (much milder than the photo, I admit) variations between the other cervical vertebrae, the thoracic, and the lumbar. The sacrum is different enough from the rest that if you weren't familiar with anatomy you might not realize that it belongs with the rest of the spinal column, and the coccyx ditto. Also (and I am actually looking at a human spine as we speak, believe it or not, as I own a skeleton) there can be rather large variations within the vertebrae themselves. Maybe my skeleton had a bad back, but there is more variation than I ever imagined before I had the opportunity to study a real skeleton rather than a plastic model.

I was thinking, while looking at the photo, that one of the larger flatter artifacts in the curve might be something akin to a sacrum myself.

Gu1tarJohn
Very nice! Intriguing. Could be fossils, could just be rocks. Very unusual rocks if that's all they are. If they are actually fossils, though, I would bet that NASA would absolutely, positively, NEVER EVER EVER admit it. They could get pics of a friggin' village with beings walking around the rover, peeing on the tires and they would explain it away as ANYTHING but...I hope I'm wrong though.

Why?


If the guys at NASA found evidence of life on Mars, they would be the rockstars of the science world and their funding would be assured for a very, very long time. It seems to me that they would derive much, much more benefit from that than covering it up.

riiver
reply to post by netwarrior

 

Going against it, the supposed vertebra lack any uniformity, other than their vague shape and height. The front one is even pyramidal in structure, whereas the back crests are square columnar. Still, this is life on another frickin' planet so I'll give you that one. I'm fairly shocked that IF (that's a big if) thats what this is, that it looks so much like ancient Earth life. Is it possible that Mars was an ancient geoengineering project gone wrong?

Think of the human spine, though---the entire human spinal column including the sacrum and coccyx. C1 is shaped completely differently from the rest of the vertebrae, and there are (much milder than the photo, I admit) variations between the other cervical vertebrae, the thoracic, and the lumbar. The sacrum is different enough from the rest that if you weren't familiar with anatomy you might not realize that it belongs with the rest of the spinal column, and the coccyx ditto. Also (and I am actually looking at a human spine as we speak, believe it or not, as I own a skeleton) there can be rather large variations within the vertebrae themselves. Maybe my skeleton had a bad back, but there is more variation than I ever imagined before I had the opportunity to study a real skeleton rather than a plastic model.

I was thinking, while looking at the photo, that one of the larger flatter artifacts in the curve might be something akin to a sacrum myself.

However, the variation you see is in a gradual progression from C1 to S1 and, even though the size and sape of C1 may differ than C1, the structures have analogous purposes and the difference really is due to the structures they support. You can see a reasoned pattern when you look at the spine in front of you.

ArMaP

Originally posted by Cohort
reply to post by FuturePeace

 

Brookings Report
en.wikipedia.org...

The Brookings Report also says that they should make a new one some years latter, as things would obviously change.

Do we have a new report or do we keep on using that 50 years old report?

I would have to agree with you on that. In the interval 50 years, people, through science education and popular culture have gotten "desensitized" to the idea. I don't think that it would be as devastating as assumed.

Good to see this pop up again since no one has substantiated if these are bones. The implications for life having lived on mars is enormous. What would this do to world religion or people's belief systems overall? Would people panic - thinking it could have a link to our pressence and potential demise? I'm sure before such an announcement they would have to be completely sure. They can get funding by saying "we need to investigate further but want to stay quiet about it until we know more." Having said that - we went there to look for potential life so isn't there a plan in place? Knowing people - I doubt they anticipated anything so obvious. Looks like bones to me.

Neat. . .I would love for there to be indisputable proof of these types of lifeforms on Mars. I can never tell if I'm seeing what I'm seeing, or am I just hoping to see.

Too many people will be afraid of how these discoveries might rewrite the history of humanity. For all I know, Mars was Eden.

reply to post by NavyDoc

So has there been anymore expert opinions on the spine/rock? This is still a unique find, imnho, and the fact that it hasn't gotten more MSM exposure is telling in a way (although MSM misses a lot of stories! See the Bevel thread highlighted in my sig). Arken, have you been interviewed by any journalist on this?

NavyDoc

Gu1tarJohn
Very nice! Intriguing. Could be fossils, could just be rocks. Very unusual rocks if that's all they are. If they are actually fossils, though, I would bet that NASA would absolutely, positively, NEVER EVER EVER admit it. They could get pics of a friggin' village with beings walking around the rover, peeing on the tires and they would explain it away as ANYTHING but...I hope I'm wrong though.

Why?


If the guys at NASA found evidence of life on Mars, they would be the rockstars of the science world and their funding would be assured for a very, very long time. It seems to me that they would derive much, much more benefit from that than covering it up.

No really. This is a false argument.

The Extraterrestrial Issue is a matter of (Inter) National Security.

NASA is ruled by Military. Every single word on this matter, is under Military/Intelligence control.

Aleister
reply to post by NavyDoc

 

So has there been anymore expert opinions on the spine/rock? This is still a unique find, imnho, and the fact that it hasn't gotten more MSM exposure is telling in a way (although MSM misses a lot of stories! See the Bevel thread highlighted in my sig). Arken, have you been interviewed by any journalist on this?

No.

None journalist is interested in this kind of news.

They find more intriguing the gossip about the Hollywood starsystem....

But there is a strange CLUE: when I discovered these anomalies, and posted on ATS, I send some of the images to a Phd. Paleontologist of the University in my Town.

In his reply, He menace me to show to him and his department, exactly where I had shoot that photos, because the finds of fossils are competence of his department and deserve more accurate analisys.

So, implicitly, he had admit, from his awareness on this matter, that these images, at first glance, were fossils.

When I wrote him that those image are not from this planet but coming from Mars.... he said that he is no more interested in the research and analisys because... there is't life on Mars.

reply to post by Arken


Arken, I believe that your possible Mars vertebrae find is the best you have provided thus far. I am not saying that it is not just rock, but I am also not saying that it is. Interesting without a doubt though. ~$heopleNation

reply to post by Arken


Surprising, really. If that Mars Flower was publicized heavily in the media, the spine should be as well. But either none of them have found this thread and read it, or nobody has pointed to it for them. Journalists are busy little furry creatures, and to alert one to a good story sometimes takes rice cakes left in their path.

Zcustosmorum
I'm not surprised considering the other anomalies found on this planet, NASA picked that spot because they knew any signs of life that was once there would be washed into that crater.

Something else to consider, for those not familiar with astrobiology, planets must be within the habitable zone of their parent star, which through time obviously cools, I propose that Mars was once in that habitable zone

It was hit by something big enough to potentially slightly move it maybe? Surely whenever that happened was (millions?) long ago, seems like it would be a big assumption that we'd think nothing could change in all that time.

Rodinus
What makes me chuckle about this whole saga is that in a couple of hundred or so million years from now, explorers from another planet, star system or whatever are going to send a robot to our good old planet earth and pictures will be sent back to their space agency...
I can just picture the aliens on their telepathic, hologramic or whatever type of communication techniques they have saying :
"You still haven't got it right have you? they are just rocks!!!"
Even if that rock formation looks somewhat like the Eiffel tower, Big Ben, Statue of Liberty, Sperm whale bones etc etc...

In the 1970s, Reader's Digest published the most hilarious article. I was just a kid when I read it. It was basically about these archeologists in the far future that dig up and "discover" -- a modern (1970s) hotel room.

I am pretty sure this article is where the "bowing to the porcelain god" joke about vomiting in the toilet came from. It was, of course, a shrine. The drain plug on a chain was a ceremonial necklace the religious chieftain wore. (As I fuzzily recall. This was probably 35-40 years ago.) The whole article was like that, interpreting modern stuff in the way that we seem to interpret ancient finds. So funny!

It's funny to imagine what historians of the future might make of us. I imagine someone finding a stash of twinkies, and the great debate that would ensue about how this was obviously an information storage technology designed to last nearly forever, and then desperately trying to figure out the pattern in the biochemical makeup of twinkie transfats...

Arken
Who really rule the Agency?
Who make this decision?
I'm sure that the majority of the NASA's Researchers are tired and frustrated to submit to the "Rule of the Silence" and they are ready to spread publicly all their incredible discoveries....

Actually, there's a thought. Maybe 'Anonymous' could do something TRULY interesting and post mass unedited raw pics, as opposed to the "after vetted by single-source agency and deemed fit for release to the public" stuff.

Oh wait. I hope even theorizing that doesn't make me a criminal...

netwarrior
Mars is not a vacuum. It's entirely plausible that these "samples" were eroded out of the surrounding stratum as early as a month ago. Mars may not be geologically active but it definitely has weather.

Glad I read this as now I don't need to say it. I don't know why we 'assume' that the 'surface' we see of that lakebed was the surface for millennia or something. Given the weather, it could have been 'the surface' in two week increments 47 times over the last few millennia and we have no way of knowing that.

It's a lake bed. There was water. Lake beds tend to result in sedimentary rock-fossils at least here. It may be different there, but the part that confuses me about this subject is:

Why would we ASSUME that there could and would be no life there, and consider that the "default," as if being seriously open to the idea is some kind of wild conspiracy or woo idea?

All we really know in detail of any 'planet' with 'water' which we know Mars had, is life. We are surrounded by life. Including dried lake beds with fossils. So why should anyone assume that it is unlikely to be so?

Assumptions are problematic in either direction, but if we are going to assume regarding life on a water-filled planet, shouldn't the assumption be in favor of it, given it's our primary evidence of the one thing we HAVE studied more than anything else in the universe -- Earth?

Arken
The Extraterrestrial Issue is a matter of (Inter) National Security.
NASA is ruled by Military. Every single word on this matter, is under Military/Intelligence control.

Correct. I have never really understood why expecting business, government, or military, to behave precisely as if they are business, government, or military, makes someone a conspiracist. This does not require suspicion, it requires simply the common sense about their structure, their reason for being, and the operation of structures of that sort, which we have a long history of experience to observe. "Organized intent with certain predictable patterns" exists in nearly every social structure man creates. Particularly those.

Very interesting pics, I'm not sure if they are fossilized bones or rocks, but interesting nonetheless

NavyDoc

Gu1tarJohn
Very nice! Intriguing. Could be fossils, could just be rocks. Very unusual rocks if that's all they are. If they are actually fossils, though, I would bet that NASA would absolutely, positively, NEVER EVER EVER admit it. They could get pics of a friggin' village with beings walking around the rover, peeing on the tires and they would explain it away as ANYTHING but...I hope I'm wrong though.

Why?


If the guys at NASA found evidence of life on Mars, they would be the rockstars of the science world and their funding would be assured for a very, very long time. It seems to me that they would derive much, much more benefit from that than covering it up.

Valid point. Hadn't thought of it from that prospective. They do seem to act like "Officer Barbrady" from South Park though when anything is mentioned about extraterrestrial life and even more so when UFOs are mentioned. "Nothing to see here, folks, move along..." We'll see.

reply to post by OrionHunterX


The "machine parts" are really interesting.