NASA team cites new evidence that meteorites from Mars contain ancient fossils

The Washington Post ^ | 04 May 2010 | Marc Kaufman

[Palter]

NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars.

In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life.

"We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life," team leader David McKay said at a NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology.

The researchers' presentations were not met with any of the excited frenzy that greeted the original 1996 announcement about the meteorite -- which led to a televised statement by President Bill Clinton in which he announced a "space summit," the formation of a commission to examine its implications and the birth of a NASA-funded astrobiology program.

Fourteen years of relentless criticism have turned many scientists against the McKay results, and the Mars meteorite "discovery" has remained an unresolved and somewhat awkward issue. This has continued even though the team's central finding -- that Mars once had living creatures -- has gained broad acceptance among the biologists, chemists, geologists, astronomers and other scientists who make up the astrobiology community.

"Biomorphs" found on meteorites traced to Mars have been proposed as evidence that life has existed on the Red Planet

[Brugmansian]

the original 1996 announcement about the meteorite -- which led to a televised statement by President Bill Clinton

I remember that. Clinton was, as usual, jammed up about something and events were reaching a critical stage. The thought was he and NASA made a point about it to distract attention from the grifter's problem.

[aimhigh]

Thanks. I loved this part: " . .and so are probably real and believable."

Don't you just love funding motivated science?