Volcanic-Rock Microfossils: Building an Atlas to Guide Martian Biosignature Searches

To the point

Led by Magnus Ivarsson, Therese Sallstedt, and Diana-Thean Carlsson, the work argues that microbes living inside Earth’s subseafloor volcanic rocks represent the planet’s broadest microbial habitat and a realistic analogue for Martian biosignatures, and it calls for building a volcanic-rock microfossil atlas to guide Mars life-detection efforts, using both in‑situ rover analyses and ex‑situ Earth‑based imaging of samples.