A Striped Surprise (Mission blog about "Zebra rock")
A Striped Surprise (Mission blog about "Zebra rock")
Last week, team scientists and the internet alike were amazed when Perseverance spotted a black-and-white striped rock unlike any seen on Mars before. Is this a sign of exciting discoveries to come?
The science team thinks that this rock has a texture unlike any seen in Jezero Crater before, and perhaps all of Mars. Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but early interpretations are that igneous and/or metamorphic processes could have created its stripes. Since Freya Castle is a loose stone that is clearly different from the underlying bedrock, it has likely arrived here from someplace else, perhaps having rolled downhill from a source higher up. This possibility has us excited, and we hope that as we continue to drive uphill, Perseverance will encounter an outcrop of this new rock type so that more detailed measurements can be acquired.
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The idea that this "zebra" or "bad camo" rock could be metamorphic is really something, an interpretation I didn't even seriously consider. If this is metamorphic, one would think at first glance that it isn't more of the same material we've sorta-detected on Mars already, which is probably the hydrothermal or shock metamorphic kind. Mars Guy considered metamorphic rock in his last video only to discard it...
Then again, the Nili plateau region just beyond the crater rim is supposed to be so damned old, even for Mars, that it could preserve evidence for all kinds of craziness, and I'm not sure we can rule out that this rock isn't impact ejecta from the plateau. Maybe this thing doesn't preserve evidence for something as Earth-like as plate tectonics, but that banding pattern needs a deeper look. It may not be a match for the neatly-striped metamorphic rock of Earth, but Martian metamorphism that may have occurred deep within the crust is something we shouldn't ignore. At the very least, I'd like Mars Guy's comparison of this rock to freaking dolomite to be put to the test. There's more evidence for plate tectonics on Mars than there is for that stuff!😅