Article in Nature on Mars Research
EAS Professor Juergen Schieber has a new article in Nature that provides new insights into the potential for early steps of biological evolution on Mars.
A team of scientists comprised of Juergen Schieber, a Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences within the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, and colleagues on NASA’s Curiosity Rover mission, uncovered the first tangible evidence for sustained wet-dry cycling on early Mars. The latter condition is considered essential for prebiotic chemical evolution, a stepping-stone towards the emergence of life.
In a new paper, “Sustained wet-dry cycling on early Mars,” published in the scientific journal Nature, Schieber and his co-authors utilized data from the Curiosity Rover that currently explores Gale Crater to examine ancient pattern of mudcracks filled with salt (geometric patterns like pentagons or hexagons) observed in 3.6 billion year old mudstones.
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