NASA team cites new evidence that meteorites from Mars contain ancient fossils

In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life.

“We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life,” team leader David McKay said at a NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology.

The researchers’ presentations were not met with any of the excited frenzy that greeted the original 1996 announcement about the meteorite — which led to a televised statement by President Bill Clinton in which he announced a “space summit,” the formation of a commission to examine its implications and the birth of a NASA-funded astrobiology program.

Fourteen years of relentless criticism have turned many scientists against the McKay results, and the Mars meteorite “discovery” has remained an unresolved and somewhat awkward issue. This has continued even though the team’s central finding — that Mars once had living creatures — has gained broad acceptance among the biologists, chemists, geologists, astronomers and other scientists who make up the astrobiology community.

Speaking at a four-day conference near NASA’s Johnson Space Center, McKay’s team didn’t claim it had definitive proof that the meteorites they are studying — which can be identified as Martian because the gases inside them match the Martian atmosphere — contain the remains of living organisms. Rather, the researchers described their re-energized confidence as emerging from a process of nitty-gritty science, based on inference, simulated testing and a kind of interplanetary forensics.