Did surface life evolve on Mars? Newly published research casts increased doubt

The planet Mars has long drawn interest from scientists and non-scientists as a possible place to search for evidence of life beyond Earth because the surface contains numerous familiar features such as dried river channels and dried lake beds that hint at a warmer, wetter, more earthlike climate in the past. However, Dr Joseph Michalski of the Department of Earth Sciences & Laboratory for Space Research at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and his colleagues have published papers recently that cast increased doubt on the idea of surface life evolving on Mars. These paradigm changing publications have recently been published in Nature Geoscience (December 2017) and Nature Astronomy (February 2018).