Sapphire Canyon at Jezero Crater: Best Candidate Yet for Ancient Martian Biosignatures, Pending Validation

To the point

From Jezero Crater, Sapphire Canyon—collected from Cheyava Falls—is the strongest candidate yet to preserve signs of ancient microbial life because its sediments are rich in clay, organics, sulfur, oxidized iron and phosphorus, with early PIXL and SHERLOC results showing mineral patterns like vivianite and greigite that could reflect microbial metabolism, though non-biological processes could produce them and more data are needed; the finding, published in Nature and framed by the CoLD confidence framework highlighted by Nicky Fox, is met with cautious excitement by Sean Duffy and Katie Stack Morgan about Mars’ past habitability.