(NEW YORK) — A 350-billion-year-old rock discovered on the Red Planet is “the closest we’ve come to discovering ancient life on Mars,” according to NASA.

Potential signs of microbial life were found in a rock sample collected by the rover in 2024 from an ancient dry riverbed on Mars’ Jezero Crater — an area of rocky outcrops on the edges the Neretva Vallis, a river valley carved by water rushing to the canyon billions of years ago, NASA officials announced in a press conference on Wednesday.

The sample, named “Sapphire Canyon,” contains potential biosignatures, which are substances or structures that might have a biological origin, NASA said.

“To be clear, it’s not life itself, but a signature, like seeing a fossil or leftovers from a microbial process,” Nicky Fox, associate administrat

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