A Texas A&M geobiologist has joined NASA in what may be the most convincing case yet for ancient life on Mars.
Aggie Michael M. Tice and an international team discovered that Mars’ Jezero Crater contains a surprising mix of volcanic and sedimentary rocks in the Bright Angel formation, giving a glimpse of how the Red Planet once worked and whether it could have supported living things.
Since the Perseverance rover landed in 2021, Tice has helped use its PIXL and SHERLOC instruments to peer into Martian rock at a level of detail nobody expected. Rather than just gathering images, these tools let scientists read the chemical makeup of mudstones and nodules. Their findings were published in early September in Nature.
The gathered particles include iron, sulfur, phosphorus, organic carbon and minerals like vivianite and greigite. The arrangement of these minerals in reaction fronts the rover team calls “leopard spots” points toward similar settings on Earth that are friendly to life. These environments include a combination of water, organic material, and redox chemistry.
The team’s analysis focused particularly on a rock called “Cheyava Falls,” discovered in July 2024, which contains the distinctive leopard spot patterns. These circular features with dark rims and lighter cores represent chemical reaction fronts that formed after the original sediment was deposited, suggesting ongoing chemical processes that could support microbial life.
Tice’s team also uncovered evidence of multiple volcanic processes beneath the sedimentary layers. The differences hint at various lava flows, cooling and mixing with crustal material. These are the same magma processes seen in places like Idaho’s Snake River Plain or volcanic islands like Santorini.
None of this proves conclusively that life existed on Mars, but many scientists say some features are hard to explain without biology. To get more data, NASA needs to bring Mars rocks to Earth so labs here can use tools far more sensitive than anything on Mars. The Mars sample return mission faces budget uncertainties and timeline challenges, with current plans targeting the early 2030s at the earliest.
For now, Texas A&M is working at the frontier, helping push the questions and possibilities further than ever before. The Bright Angel formation represents what researchers call “potential biosignatures,” features that warrant serious consideration as possible evidence of ancient Martian life. Meanwhile, they continue investigating both biological and non-biological explanations for these remarkable discoveries.
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