[JimSEA]

This may be a life detection technique that could be incorporated in the limited space of a probe. At this point in our technology, bringing back rock samples like those that have been screened in this manner would be ideal. It wouldn't mean we'd have to return a massive amount of rock, just small likely samples.

[JimSEA]

Sorry, I screwed up. Second and third paragraphs should be:

In the journal Astrobiology, Olcott-Marshall recently has published an analysis of Eocene rocks found in the Green River Formation, a lake system extending over parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Marshall and co-author Nicholas A. Cestari, a masters student in her lab, found these Green River rocks have features that visually indicate the presence of life, and they argue that probes to Mars should identify similar indicators on that planet and double-check them through chemical analysis.

[rktman]

“Rock samples from Western US”. Like the Beach Boys? Grassroots? Doobie Brothers? :>}

[MUDDOG]

Whatever were the historical intermediate steps to arrive at life on earth, all traces seem to be gone, since all we see now is the extremely complicated DNA/RNA reproduction method.

What would help us most to understand the chemical origin of life would be a pre-DNA type on Mars.

[null and void]

Assuming, of course, that the rocks aren’t filled with bacteria that would be pathogens to terrestrial life...

[batterycommander]

I’m reminded of Werner von Braun’s trip to the Antarctic in 1967 to fetch “Moon rocks” when he realized that there was no way the Moon landings were possible. The Moon landings were faked at a Hollywood sound stage in Area 51.