The hunt for extraterrestrial life could be nearing its end thanks to a team of scientists at Purdue University, Indiana, US.
Researchers studying the Red Planet’s prehistoric climate discovered Mars was once covered in vast, frozen ice sheets.
The presence of ice coupled with intense volcanic eruptions could have created a “little happy place” for minuscule alien organisms to thrive.
Assistant professor Briony Horgan, from Purdue University, said: “Even if Mars was a cold and icy wasteland, these volcanic eruptions interacting with ice sheets could have created a little happy place for microbes to exist.
“This is the kind of place you'd want to go to understand how life would've survived on Mars during that time.”
Professor Horgan and her colleagues looked at climate patterns on Earth to establish what the surface of Mars may have looked like in the distant past.
Landscape observations have led scientists to believe Mars was abundant with free flowing lakes and rivers around four billion years ago.
But recent climate models suggest the planet was not warm enough for liquid water to pool on the surface.