For an arid and desert planet, Mars hides many interesting surprises, which serve to speculate.
On April 1, the rover Curiosity sent a striking image of what it resembles a fossil with spines. The astrobiologist Nathalie A. Cabrol says in this regard that “I’ve been studying Mars for 20 years, and it’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen“.
Mars is a rocky and arid planet, made up mainly of… rocks, dirt or sand. A priori, quite monotonous. But Nature is capricious, and from time to time we can see Photographs of the rover that crosses its surface, truly impressive.
We recently marveled at the round dunes of Marsand we were speechless with the lightsaber found by the Perseverance.
Today we are struck by a strange formation captured by Curiosity, which has gone viral on networks. The astrobiologist Nathalie A. Cabrol has posted it, and assures that it is “the most bizarre thing i’ve ever seen” In mars:
At first glance, if we use a little imagination, it seems a fossil of a prehistoric animalor a huge dragon. With a more realistic look, what we see is authentic thorns that come out of the rock.
This strange formation is located in a huge crater of 154 kilometers, called Gale Crater. There the rocks are very peculiar, and some of them show the aforementioned”thorns“:
What are we seeing?
Astrobiologist Nathalie A. Cabrol explains it in the comments of the tweet. Is about “remains of ripples after much erosion… Impressive effect, however“.
The rock has been eroding in such a whimsical way that they look like thorns. You have to realize that in Mars the atmosphere, gravity, and winds are completely different from Earth, so both the shape and the erosion of the rocks are different.
The “dragon” spines of Mars have turned out to be a eroded rock capriciously. The Red Planet never ceases to amaze us, and many other unexpected things still await us.