You can't derive history from structure. You can reasonably speculate that if you know the history of object A, and you find an object B that is very similar, then you know something about the history of B.
Interestingly, this is how Darwin derived the rules for natural selection. He spoke with large numbers of animal and plant breeders, noted the history of domesticated plants and animals, and speculated that the same rules of design and manufacture apply to all living things. The difference being that "wild" nature is a lot more wasteful and ruthless in pruning its populations.
Then what are those rovers trying to do on Mars? Then what are these researchers trying to do?
Heck, what are whole fields of science including archaeology, geology, paleoclimatology, the oil exploration mentioned earlier, etc. doing, then?