On August 14th, Curiosity's MastCam recording this image :
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The object in the centre looks curiously like a thigh bone. Of course the conspiracy sites (this for instance) went crazy.
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No bones about it! Seen by Mars rover Curiosity using its MastCam, this Mars rock may look like a femur thigh bone. Mission science team members think its shape is likely sculpted by erosion, either wind or water.
If life ever existed on Mars, scientists expect that it would be small simple life forms called microbes. Mars likely never had enough oxygen in its atmosphere and elsewhere to support more complex organisms. Thus, large fossils are not likely.
The human brain is very good at extracting familiar patterns from a chaotic background; this is almost certainly a good example.
To this writer's eye, the object looks a lot like what would result if all the reddish material was eroded from around the pale lined material in the upper-right. But, who knows.
(cue the David Bowie song…)
