How to Find a Martian: A Fossil Hunter’s Guide to the Red Planet

By Sean McMahon

Why the truth about life in the Universe lies just a world away – in the deep history of Mars

Mars today is an arid frozen, inhospitable waste. But there are signs everywhere of a kinder world that vanished long ago: a place of gentle warmth and flowing water, of blue skies and bubbling pools. Did life arise there too? To find out, today’s Mars rovers are not looking for living creatures. They are looking for fossils.

In HOW TO FIND A MARTIAN, the leading astrobiologist Sean McMahon explains the profound scientific ideas behind this multi-billion-dollar endeavour. What is life, how does it begin, and what could it look like on Mars? Where on Mars are the best-preserved remains of ancient habitable environments? How could dead Martian organisms have fossilized? How can we find and recognize these fossils billions of years later, without being fooled by nature’s trickery or our own wishful thinking? And if there are no fossils on Mars – or even traces of primordial soup – what are the implications for our understanding of life in the Universe? Is Earth even more special than we thought?

In vivid and engaging prose, McMahon draws on fundamental recent work by astrobiologists and palaeobiologists around the world to show how these questions are now being answered.