The case for fos­sil life in Mar­t­ian bac­te­ria in the now famous mete­orite ALH 84001 (Shown) blasted off the Mar­t­ian sur­face a bil­lion years ago fell to earth in Antarc­tica and was recov­ered in 1984 was strength­ened. Exam­i­na­tion in the mid 1990s by sci­en­tists found chem­i­cal residues asso­ci­ated with life as well as odd shaped micro­scopic struc­tures resem­bling ter­res­trial fos­sil bacteria.

A new study sup­ports the Mars bio­log­i­cal ori­gin the­ory. The new work cen­ters on so-called mag­netic bac­te­ria that on Earth, and appar­ently Mars as well, that leave distinctively-shaped rem­nants in the rock with a high chem­i­cal purity more like a bio­log­i­cal fea­ture than geo­log­i­cal. “These are just like the magnetite-related life forms found in the mete­orite believed to rep­re­sent Mar­t­ian life forms”, says Dr. Den­nis Bazylin­ski. New dis­cov­er­ies of ancient seas and rivers have strength­ened the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence for ancient Mar­t­ian life. Thanks to the Examiner.