Curiosity Rover Photo Of Fossil Fish On Mars Is Proof Of Ancient Marine Life On The Red Planet, Says UFO Blogger [Photo]

A UFO blogger claims to have spotted a fossilized or petrified fish in a photo of rock-strewn Martian terrain snapped by NASA’s Curiosity rover earlier this week.

UFO blogger Scott C. Waring made the astonishing claim in a recent post to his weird UFO and alien conspiracy theory blog UFO Sightings Daily. According to Waring who is notorious even among his peers in the UFO community for his outlandish claims and theories about aliens and UFOs, an image of the Martian surface snapped by one of Curiosity rover’s Navcams on March 23, 2016 (Sol 1290) at 15:26:01 UTC, shows a fossilized or petrified fish.

The alien hunter uploaded the Curiosity rover image allegedly showing the petrified Mars fish to his blog on March 24. He uploaded the raw image from NASA’s JPL website, a zoomed-in version of the image and a colored version he created that highlights the alleged Mars fish.

The raw Curiosity rover image may be viewed here on NASA’s JPL website (see below).

The UFO blogger comments, casually, that incredible as it may seem, NASA’s recent announcement that liquid water flows on Mars and evidence that the planet once had rivers, lakes, ponds and oceans similar to Earth’s makes it possible that Mars once teemed with marine life.

He asserts that if anyone has doubts that Mars had marine life in the past, the latest image from Curiosity rover proves it.

“It’s a good thing I got a photo of this or you would never believe it,” the alien hunter writes. “Last year NASA announced that there were oceans on Mars and that it did look a lot like Earth in many ways.”

“I guess this petrified fish is proof of that,” he continues. “Look closely and you will see the tail fin and the fin ridge that starts at the lower back fin and moves all the way to the fish’s stomach.”

“The fish is also about half a meter long — about the size of a bass or small salmon, ” he concludes.

According to the UFO hunter, the evidence contained in the photograph is so plain that he is able to throw down the gauntlet to NASA to give an alternative explanation of the object in the Curiosity rover photo.

But this is not the first time that alien hunters have reported spotting marine life on Mars. A rash of claims followed the first hint from NASA scientists some years back that the Red Planet may have had rivers, lakes and oceans in the past.

According to the Inquisitr, Mars anomaly hunters had reported in November 2014 that NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered a fossil fish on Mars. The fact-checking website Snopes rushed to debunk the claim. But, since then, Snopes appears to have wisely given up the struggle to keep up with the deluge of fantastic claims of evidence of life and ancient civilization on Mars by indefatigable Mars alien hunters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VnOskDc9J0

But then alien hunters would likely wonder why anyone should consider claims of the discovery of fossil fish and other marine life on Mars as incredible when even NASA has admitted that the planet once had oceans and that Martian rocks may well hold some of the oldest fossil remains of ancient microbial life in our solar system. With regard to claims about Mars fossil fish, alien hunters like Waring would ask, “What’s more natural than fish where there are oceans?”

Despite public incredulity when confronted with “evidence” of life on Mars by YouTube Mars anomaly hunters, scientists take seriously the possibility of finding fossilized life on the planet. According to NASA, scientists believe there is reliable evidence that about 3-4 billion years ago Mars had been remarkably Earth-like, warm and wet, with liquid water flowing in rivulets that coalesced into streams, rivers, lakes, and likely seas and oceans.

Such conditions, including a dense atmosphere, suggest that the planet may have had simple microbial life forms. However, no researchers, besides alien hunters, have suggested that the planet may also have hosted more complex multi-cellular life forms.

According to Jack Farmer, pioneer exopaleontologist at Arizona State University (ASU), “It’s plausible that simple organisms developed on an early wet and warm Mars… there might be a fossil record of ancient microorganisms if we look in the right places.”

“Mars may harbor the best preserved rocks in the solar system,” he added. “The fossil record on Mars might go all the way back to the earliest history of the planet.”

An odd controversy erupted among astrobiologists in 2014 when Richard Hoover, a distinguished former NASA astrobiologist, accused NASA scientists of deliberately destroying a possible Mars fossil photographed by the Opportunity rover in 2004 (see YouTube above).

Hoover, one of the founding members of NASA’s Astrobiology Research Group, who had conducted pioneering research on meteorite microfossils and claims to have found evidence of fossils in meteorite samples, accused NASA scientists of destroying a rock formation on Mars that was strikingly similar to forms of life on Earth called crinoids. Opportunity had photographed the rock in 2004 (see photo below).

According to Hoover, when he asked a NASA scientist why Opportunity was allowed to destroy the rock formation, the scientist explained that the rock was crushed to allow the inside to be tested for carbon.

But Hoover voiced suspicion about the motives of NASA scientists, saying, “Anyone who does much in the field of paleontology knows that you don’t have to find carbon to find fossil.”

But skeptics have often dismissed claims by conspiracy theorists that NASA and other government agencies are covering up evidence of extraterrestrial life, saying that NASA has no reasons to do so.

[Image via NASA/JPL]