That's the boiled-down message from NASA, which revealed Thursday that the Perseverance rover had found a rock with compelling evidence of organic molecules and with intriguing markings that, if they were seen on Earth, would be consistent with biological activity in the past.
"We cannot say right now that we have discovered life on Mars," said Katie Stack Morgan, the deputy project scientist. "But what we are saying is that we have a potential biosignature, which is a set of features that could have a biological origin but do need further study and more data."
"This is the kind of feature if found on Earth, life would probably be involved with it," she said. "At the same time, these are chemical reactions that don't require life."
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