Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars
Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars.
Hurowitz, J. A., et al (2025)
Nature, 645, Article 8080.
Dang, that’s a lot of mineralogy. This particular article is so full of mineralogy. The upshot is that Perseverance rover found some minerals and trace chemicals in genuinely ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars. if we found these minerals and chemicals and shapes of chemical reaction leftovers on Earth we would take this as evidence of early life
It seems like everyone is scared of saying that there was life on Mars 3-4 billion years ago, perhaps because of the bad press that resulted from someone saying that about the ALH-84001 meteorite. This paper goes even further out of its way to come up with abiotic reasons for the minerals and chemical remains than the paper on alkane abundance did. I’m not a mineralogist or a chemist so maybe something is getting lost, but this paper really seems like an effort to wave off what a plurality of geobiologists would call evidence of past life.
I can’t recommend reading this one unless you’re knowledgeable about mineralogy. It doesn’t have much more.
Ten pages, 83 authors, a 55-item bibliography.
Hurowitz, J. A., Tice, M. M., Allwood, A. C., Cable, M. L., Hand, K. P., Murphy, A. E., Uckert, K., Bell, J. F., Bosak, T., Broz, A. P., Clavé, E., Cousin, A., Davidoff, S., Dehouck, E., Farley, K. A., Gupta, S., Hamran, S.-E., Hickman-Lewis, K., Johnson, J. R., et al. (2025).
Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars.
Nature, 645, Article 8080.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09413-0