NASA has found “the clearest sign yet” that life once existed on Mars, the agency announced on Wednesday.

After a three-decade search of the Red Planet yielded nothing but false starts and red herrings, scientists announced they had discovered potential signs of ancient microbial life encased in a sample of rocks collected by the Mars Perseverance rover last summer.

The samples, which were collected in the Nertva Vallis, an ancient river valley in the Jezero Crater formed around 3.7 billion years ago, are said to contain unusual spots and seed-like shapes, which could point to the existence of lifeforms that lived in the area in the distant past.

They were found after the rover’s tools detected trace amounts of iron and phosphorus in the ground, which can form when microbes break down t

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