Common_Expectations_in_Biology

We have discussed many aspects of our limitations in recognizing the extreme limits of biology as applicable to Mars possible fossils and current suggestive objects in photos from landers.
These current items break a few of the 'rules' of common expectations, and show the difficulty of seeing early life-like residual fossils and cast shapes which could be billions of years old. These are large viewable unaided eyesight items, far larger in size than any expected Mars biology items, but the stretch of imagining is an aid in breaking the bounded limits of human imagination.
.Comb jelly, soft and difficult to photograph when alive in water. Suggested as earliest know animal divergence in Nature, April, 2008.
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.Lungless frog, breaking a pattern of common expectation. Many larvae and animals, microbes, fish, do not utilize direct atmospheric lung type breathing. This is not to suggest that the gases for Earth type life is or was present on current of early Mars. This also does not show the gas pressure was changing on Mars.
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Pages in an encyclopedia of exceptions from common life on Earth.

Dana,
I have to say that even when they are alive seeing simple comb jellies under water (normally in the last 2meters as you approach the surface after a dive) is an out of this world experience,
The picture doesnt do justice to the sight and their variety of shapes, their jelly particularly at the edges splits the light like a prism with the result that their edges glow with a blue and red aura. They pulsate as they move through the water which adds to the colour show and they are so small is hard to believe if at times your are looking at a real object or just an illusion .

My point is if they look so wierd and unusual here then we will definitely encounter difficulties with similar entities elsewhere

I have no experience with these exotic looking creatures, perhaps, this page can improve the view point of the beauty they bestow on the open waters.
As these are very difficult to preserve in the Earth record of sediments, we might expect to be looking for years by hand find samples on a now dessicated planet like Mars.
Any discounting of the record before it is assembled is a wasting of current investments in landers. That was the suggestion I was forwarding. Life on Mars might have had a very limited distribution, and a limited preservation potential.
I would like to do the diving, perhaps a scene more ethereal than in photos to see in person.
What percentage would we expect to find preserved, and to what degree of detail?

Dana,

I totally agree- we need a much broader perspective when looking for the unknown.

Expecting to find recognizable bones or the like is maybe a bit too optimisitic.

These creatures have absolutely no boney parts - they are totally jelly so I imagine unless they were preserved in something like amber they leave very little trace. Although I note in the first reference page some fossilized versions have been found recently.

Probably when they dessicate there are small quantities of organo chemicals left but that would be all.

The ones I have seen are only a few cm long at best and they tend to be in the top few meters of the Atlantic off the West coast of Ireland in July and August. Diving there can be surprising even though we are far from the tropics!

Microbes, utilizing what is commonly considered to be a universal poisonous chemistry for a variation in photosynthesis, without the toxic effects of the chemical exposure, and, also, living in a very saline concentrated water body environment where salt encrustations build small islands in the lake. The microbes live in an environment once considered a 'dead zone', as this is one of the saltiest lakes in the U.S. The water travels inbound, and evaporates, or permeates the local ground nearby, and then evaporates.
Two pages to this popular news coverage in the Discovery channel online, and the actual science is found in a current release of the journal Science. A link to the second page, as my browser was having difficulty with the 'back' button when moving between pages. The text links at the article end seem to work for page transitions. These links may help as well.
Arsenic is now a resource for life sustaining processes in a salty water stagnant lake.
The article acknowledges more than twenty microbe types are known to use arsenic, often in anoxic and briny waters, to augment, or substitute, the other pathways to transpiration and energy production.
Also suggested is the Achaean age of this pathway origin.

The life force or spirit precedes the material manifestation.

While beyond our complete understanding, it is not beyond our ability to reason.

Life on Earth's final frontier once again demonstrates the fundamental principle of "Life will find a way" - once there is life.

I have not the slightest personal doubt that there is life on Mars.

I hope that my own brief flash of being will overlap with the scientific proof of this assertion.

Maybe Thomas Gold had something, after all...