[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Hunting martian fossils best bet for locating Mars life, says ASU researcher
2007 AAAS Annual Meeting
February 16, 2007
San Francisco, CA

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Sure. Point is, it's very hard in my opinion to identify macrofossils (or the macro artifacts of microorganisms) on an alien world unless you have a detailed understanding of the primordial environment & its chemistry. For example, we see all sorts of symmetrical and/or odd-looking features in many of the MER pics, but certainly none so far that can't be much more simply explained by non-biological processes. Even the biogenic origin of many fossil stromatolites on Earth (esp. the oldest) is not completely certain.

All that being said, Phoenix's atomic-force microscope is very exciting...did not know about that, thanks! This instrument seems more than capable of identifying fossil cells; the trick is going to be distinguishing them from terrestrial contaminants.

EDIT: Here's a decent primer on AFMs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_force_microscope