Summary Of Findings And Images

1. Mars has fossils- I have now identified at least thirty species of arthropod or echinoderm.  There appear to be crinoids and echinoderms, some molluscs and trilobites- life forms that appeared on the Earth about 530,000,000 years ago in the Cambrian Era.

2. Mars rover Opportunity first found spherules by the thousands, which later turned out to be many types of small, primitive aquatic organisms, similar mostly to sea urchins and rolled up trilobites.

3.  Mars rover Spirit later found spherules as well, halfway around the planet, that match the Opportunity findings precisely.  Spirit also found stromatolites, primitive layered bacterial colonies that often lived in very salty brines.

4.  All the "spherules" show consistent, repetitive markings and many of the spherules are identical.  Typical features are triangles with fine lines and circles, raised symmetrical ridges, grooves, "hand" patterns, and slots.  These features closely match known organisms and fossils on the Earth (in particular, sea urchins, cystoids, and rolled up trilobites).

5.  Mars had large oceans in order for these organisms to get all over its surface.  These are aquatic organisms.

6.  There are sure to be many more fossils and organisms, since it takes more than a handful of organisms to make a biosphere.

7.  Some larger fossil beds have now been found with fantastic specimens of all kinds.  But all appear to be aquatic organisms.  Clearly Meridiani Planum was a sea or large brine lake at some time in the past.  NASA has now confirmed that the area was "soaking in water" in their terminology, and has found huge quantities of salts that were deposited by drying seawater.

8.  Now NASA has confirmed that Mars had to have sizeable bodies of salt water- if you look at the location and topography of Meridian Planum and accept that very little tectonic activity has occurred, then Mars had to be at least 1/3 covered in oceans, with a maximum depth of about 4 kilometers.  This confirms my findings that indicate large oceans must have existed on Mars.

9.  Mars is most certainly still a living world- there are sure to be extreme halophile bacteria living in its soils, and there may still be small arthropods that are resistant to salt, near vacuum, and extremes of temperature.  Keep in mind that they have probably had a half billion years or more to adapt to these nearly intolerable conditions.

10.  Mars is also sure to still have large quantities of water present just below the soil.  There are many images that support this concept, showing darkened, even wet-appearing spots like mud or very recent runoff.  Note that this water cannot evaporate, even in the near-vacuum of Mars' atmosphere, because its relative humidity is nearly 100% all the time.  This in itself indicates that large amounts of moisture must be present, like the brine just under the sand at a beach.

11.  There are vents below many of the slab-shaped rocks that show where water has emerged within a few days.  This is supported because dry vents would have filled with silt and sand due to the wind.  These vents are clearly active and have been so within (at most) weeks.  Further images show geyser fumaroles and wet mud.  And, liquid water can indeed exist on Mars.  NASA posted an in-depth page showing this is true.

12.  My experiments and the examination of the image data support the idea that Mars has periodic rain that consists of small, high speed droplets.  The soil is constantly being wetted and reconfigured by this rain as well as the spray from geysers or from groundwater.

13.  The study of stromatolites shows that many lived in hypersaline lakes.  Included in their structure we often find coccoids, fossilized spherules formed by bacteria.  They usually come in distinct sizes, and 5.2 mm is usually the largest such structures found.  They are made of calcium carbonate and have varying textures.  Some of the spherules are very likely coccoids.

Here is a brief list of the most obvious findings.

What species am I?  Certainly not a rock, because there are others exactly like me.	My shell looks like that of an urchin very like salmacis sphaeroides.  Three examples of this marking have so far been found.  A terrestrial equivalent has been found.

Can you identify this organism?	These markings are very precise and very distinctive.  Ventral plate of some small crustacean?  I tentatively named this one Area Cladocera Shultsiii.  At least three and perhaps four examples of this type of marking have been found so far.
What species can this be?  The plates and clefts shown are present on many of the spherules.  I have found three that are identical to this one. Check the stereo view here  - much better lighting, far more detail.  An excellent image of this organism!	It's sort of like a sea urchin or sand dollar... it even has bumps where spines might have fit and "armor plates".  This is definitely echinodermata of some unknown sort!  I named this one Area Ophiuroidea Shultsiii because it truly looks like some sort of primitive urchin of that type.
	See the distinct "starfish" pattern on this one?  The depression on the top right hand "finger" of the star is the mouth- a split beak like a sea urchin.    There is a "hand" pattern like a starfish on the right side, and others just barely visible on the left and top.  Most of the spherules show star and star-like markings, along with raised identical sized warts or bumps.    I am naming this little fellow after my grantor, Dr. Nelson Ying, Baron of Balquhain.  After all, he paid for all my research!
	After an incredible session of writing my own sharpening and edge enhancement algorithms, I have extracted this exquisitely detailed image of a very early Sol 014 echinoderm.    This is one of the tiny "blueberries" shown in the poor contrast, gray looking images.  A sharp eye will see the fine pentagrams, stars, patterns of dots and tiles.  This is truly a sea urchin and on some of them, you can see mouths, eyespots, and other amazing features.    This is the result of frame stacking, contrast enhancement, differential conversion, and stacking once more to expand the dynamic range of the image.    Note that I have three excellent and clear images of the "hand" pattern on this urchin present on other spheres from other sols and in other settings.  Random erosion?  Hardly!

This is a perfect little sea urchin or perhaps sea biscuit that shows a definite three-fold symmetry.  This was found on Sol 054 by Opportunity.  That particular set of images is very rich in clear fossils.    Can erosion or crystal growth produce such perfect and aligned bumps of the same scale?  No.  This is a product of biology.    A terrestrial equivalent is here.
		What species of sand dollar are these two specimens?  The left one is inverted and the right one is upright.    Note the very clear and concise markings.  There is absolutely no doubt that these are some sort of sand dollar.  They also lived on Mars.    These are from Opportunity on Sol 049.

    These are actual fossils of real organisms that lived on the planet Mars at some time.  Now, can you identify these species?  Have you ever seen them anywhere before?  I call on any biologist, paleontologist, taxonomist, or other specialist to try their hand it this.

    Now, what's inside the spherules?  Click here for cross sections.

    Here is a gallery based on a single image from Sol 014, the "blueberries" image from the Opportunity site.

		Look familiar?  The fossil on the left is an extinct organism known as a crinoid- note the peach cleft and the ridges!  Exact matches!    Crinoids come in many shapes and forms.  Their distant offspring are still alive today in our oceans- sea feathers and sea lilies.
		The same applies here- more crinoid remains that closely resemble the Martian fossils.  Hey, is it a coincidence that all these crinoids are on reddish, iron-loaded fossil substrates?    The accepted theory is that iron consuming bacteria laid all the iron oxides down in substrates that we mine for iron today.    Perhaps on Mars, there was not time (or enough water and erosion) for this to happen.  That would clearly and logically explain the red color of the planet.
		This looks exactly like some of the fragments on the Martian sand- circular bits and cross sections.  These are from the stalks of crinoids that fossilized and then fractured.    You can see numerous rounded items with holes in many of the images.  They precisely match the finer details of cross sectioned crinoid stalks.

    NOTE: Verification of my claims can be had - I made a Usenet posting about this subject on the 21st of February and did a local TV 13 interview on the 25th of February, along with posting a paper on the subject to them as well.  Local news stations were made aware of this development and there is a real, ineradicable trail of my data and findings.

   There can be NO QUESTION that my findings were made public long before NASA or JPL findings.  Furthermore, all my findings are backed by solid evidence which can be easily checked by anyone.  This is not some unsubstantiated claim, but a well-reasoned, well-supported theory with gigabytes of verifiable evidence behind it, from a reputable and credible source, NASA.

Here are images of the solid model of Area Ophiuroidea Shultsiii

Huge image of many fossils- starfish, crinoids, leaves, trilobites.