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Possible life on Mars – “potential biosignatures”: NASA’s Perseverance rover has uncovered one of the most tantalizing clues yet that Mars may have hosted ancient life. Scientists reported that a sample of fine-grained, iron-rich mudstone rock from Jezero Crater contains minerals that on Earth often form due to microbial activity reuters.com. The rover team spent a year analyzing data from the rock, nicknamed “Sapphire Canyon,” before announcing what they call a “potential biosignature” – a chemical or textural signal that could have a biological origin reuters.com. The rock, which dates back ~3.6 billion years to when Jezero held a lake, has unusual ring-shaped and speckled features resembling “leopard spots” and “poppy seeds” reuters.com. Those could have been produced by chemical reactions involving microbes as the sediment turned to stone. Sean Duffy, NASA’s acting administrator, hailed the find: after exhaustive checks, “we can’t find another explanation, so this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars – which is incredibly exciting” reuters.com. Officials were quick to caution that this is not proof of life, as non-biological processes might explain the signals reuters.com reuters.com. The rover has sealed the intriguing sample for a future mission