Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life, Curiosity Rover Shows
Source: SPACE.com
Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life, Curiosity Rover Shows
by Mike Wall, Senior Writer | December 09, 2013 12:01pm ET
NASA's Curiosity rover has found evidence of an ancient Martian lake that could have supported life as we know it for long stretches — perhaps millions of years.
This long and skinny freshwater lake likely existed about 3.7 billion years ago, researchers said, suggesting that habitable environments were present on Mars more recently than previously thought.
"Quite honestly, it just looks very Earth-like," said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
"You've got an alluvial fan, which is being fed by streams that originate in mountains, that accumulates a body of water," Grotzinger told SPACE.com. "That probably was not unlike what happened during the last glacial maximum in the Western U.S."
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