Mars rover Daily Updates -Spirit Making Ground - Opportunity-A Beautiful Grind

NASA - JPL ^ | 2-24-2004 | NASA/JPL

[FireTrack]

"I wonder if they have a little can of compressed air"

LOL, it would sure come in handy here!

[Phil V.]

"concretions" . . . as in requiring a liquid environment to form? Past liquid environment is where my thoughts track.

[Ichneumon]

Note the round, darkened "circles". They seem to be a couple of the "spheres" that have been found everywhere, but scraped in half by the wheel as it dug the trench. If so, it indicates that they're a lot softer than we might have first presumed. They can't be rocklike in consistency, or else they'd either have crumbled more jaggedly, or remained whole and been dragged through the "dirt".

They seem to have more the consistency of "dirt clods", which would significantly narrow down how they might have formed.

[Indie]

Look above those 4 vertical dots you saw and tell me if you don't see something else...i.e. the "rest of it?"

[FireTrack]

I have to agree with Piltdown_Woman in the above post. These images just aren't that great plus these apparent artifacts may not be biological fossils at all.

A positive is that there appear to be differing types. At the very least, the odds of a significant find just increased from this grind.

[longtermmemmory]

neat, looks like a fosil of a "maggot"

[Phil V.]

These are not microscopic images of the trench, Ichneumon. These are images from an area of rock that was drilled/ground into by the rock abrasion tool - grinding for two hours . . . about 4mm . . . about 1/8".

[FireTrack]

Yes, I noticed that. If you look at the original, larger image and do a little zooming, you will see others that have more contrast.

Look above the black rectangle and 80% down the length starting from the left edge and you will see another circle of dots.

[Aracelis]

"concretions" . . . as in requiring a liquid environment to form? Past liquid environment is where my thoughts track.

Yes, it would require an aqueous environment according to the geology that we are familiar with (Earth). Here's a good link to a page describing concretions:

Concretions, Thunder Eggs and Geodes

[FireTrack]

One other thing Indie, I see several scattered striations in this grind similar to the striations in the body of the critter you posted.

[Aracelis]

Awww..."eurypterid" read my mind. LOL!

[FireTrack]

LOL

[Indie]

You'd think for a GEOL minor, I'd have remembered the name. LOL. PALEO was my favorite.

[Phil V.]

thanx . . . tomorrow's read . . . gnite!

[Aracelis]

I'll say goodnight too...

[Don Joe]

check out #25 . .

Looks like a clam.

I'm talking about how a clam looks when it's open; this looks like there's a clamshell with the hinge on the bottom, and we're looking down on the gap opposite the hinge. I don't see it so much as a "spiral" (as another poster mentioned -- I'm still going through the thread), but as the wavy pieces of clam "flesh" that one sees between the inner part of a shell half and the "foot" in the middle.

I'm not saying that's what it is, of course. It's just what it looks like to me. (I'm tired, getting ready for "in-office surgery" tomorrow morning, and may very well be in "rorschach_mode:on")

[Don Joe]

That ball looks like it might have a second "peach line", at about the 4 o' clock position.

[Don Joe]

I hope that my "gut" is mistaken, but I'll not be surprised to see this wealth of photographic public domain evidence "dry up".

Nor would I, given the deafening silence. "Elephant? What elephant? There's no elephant under the rug!"

[Don Joe]

Those dropout areas and the artifacted-to-hell rectangle will have the tinfoil brigade wetting their pants. (And foaming at the mouth.)

[Don Joe]

The lower left quarter of that photo has what looks like star-like somethings in the roughly triangular "ravine" .