Mars - Sol 676 - Fossil Ocean Floor??

I am not a rock expert but upon seeing this image I immediately though of the tracks that creatures leave on the muddy ocean floors.
Is it possible that this is a fossil of an ocean floor?
I believe this formation may occur naturally in rock, although this seems to be the only portion of rock in the area that sports these 'tracks'. Have included a picture from our oceans sea floor for comparison.

Here is the original photo;
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...
Here, the area of the tracks;
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c13de0348a97.jpg[/atsimg]
And comparison photo;
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0e85db5dd429.jpg[/atsimg]
www.caml.aq...
Whilst trying to get myself 'educated' a bit on this, I found a really interesting set of pictures and information in relation to fossil burrows and floor layers;
home.entouch.net...
I think some of the images in this will assist anyone else trying to find pictures of fossils on Mars.
They will give us a guide as to exactly what to look for, or at least, make us more aware of things laying around.

reply to post by Extralien


I had not the time to look at the photos from that Sol, but the rocks look like the common slab-like rocks that appear on several photos from the rovers, and what you see are cracks on the larger slab they broke it in smaller slabs.

I've spent a lot of time looking at rocks, and looking at fossils like you're talking about EA, and to me, it just looks like fracture lines.

I wonder what the scale of footage is on the top picture? If it is on the same scale as the bottom one, that is truely interesting. But somehow I believe the cracks are of a natural occurence of wind and erosion.

It could be that the rocks were formed that way over time through tons of sand blasting with the help of huge storms.

reply to post by Extralien


With this news I'd have to speculate you may be right. Good eye!

Maybe some day we'll gain the knowledge of all the unknowns of ourselves and the universe. Until then we have to accept the bits and pieces we're given and make the best of them.

I can see the attraction to the comparison, but in the mars pic, the cracks are jagged and appear to be natural by-products of evaporation from the soil. The earth tracks are smooth and less perturbation in the length.

Of course, could be fossilized tracks that have undergone evaporation, with the jagged perturbation superimposed around it.

Nice find at any rate.

With the Martian ancient ocean theory about, our critters could very well have been traveling atop the old sea floor all this time.

Fossils of bacteria have been found in Martian meteorites, so multicellular marine Martian fossils will be located in a matter of time...IMO...may be deeper below the surface than our mechas can get to right now...