PSEUDOFOSSILS OF MARS: ANOTHER LESSON IN CRITICAL THINKING

The search for life on Mars is a major goal of NASA and the prospect of discovering life beyond Earth is the dream of many science professionals and amateurs. But sometimes the obsession of proving life existed (or still exists) on Mars interferes with objective scientific thought. It can be easy to convince oneself that an image sent back by one of the Martian rovers or orbiters shows evidence of fossils, and even easier to convince those not well acquainted with geology that what they are looking at are indeed true fossils.

Similar to some problems associated with identifying fossils on Earth, Mars is rich in pseudofossils. Being unaware of geological processes that produce organic-looking structures, many people can be deceived into believing these structures to be of biologic origin. Being able to distinguish true fossils from pseudofossils is therefore a necessary skill for Mars exploration. Students in K-12 and college would enhance their critical thinking skills by learning how to recognize pseudofossils and the geologic processes that formed them as part of an overall review of planetary geology.