'Clearest Evidence Yet' of Ancient Lake on Mars Found by NASA's Curiosity Rover

"In the foothills of a Martian mountain, NASA's Curiosity rover found stunning new evidence of an ancient lake in the form of rocks etched with the ripples of waves," reports CNN. But they add that the evidence "appeared in an unlikely place."The rover is traversing an area of Mars called the "sulfate-bearing unit" that researchers previously thought would only show evidence of mere trickles of water, as scientists believed the rocks there formed as the surface of the red planet was drying out. Instead, the rover found some of the clearest evidence yet of ancient waters. "This is the best evidence of water and waves that we've seen in the entire mission," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement. "We climbed through thousands of feet of lake deposits and never saw evidence like this - and now we found it in a place we expected to be dry...." "Billions of years ago, waves on the surface of a shallow lake stirred up sediment at the lake bottom, over time creating rippled textures left in rock," according to a NASA news release. From NASA's announcement:Having climbed nearly a half-mile above the mountain's base, Curiosity has found these rippled rock textures preserved in what's nicknamed the 'Marker Band' - a thin layer of dark rock that stands out from the rest of Mount Sharp.... Far ahead of the Marker Band, scientists can see another clue to the history of Mars' ancient water in a valley named Gediz Vallis. Wind carved the valley, but a channel running through it that starts higher up on Mount Sharp is thought to have been eroded by a small river.

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