July 11, 2008 | 5 comments

A Lake That Looks Like Mars

To see what extraterrestrial life might be like, scientists are busy studying freshwater coral reef–like structures in a Canadian lake

By Anne Casselman

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IMMERSED IN THE PAST:

To venture below the surface of Pavilion Lake is to take a trip back in time to observe Earth's earliest life forms.

The finger-shaped 3.7-mile- (six-kilometer-) long freshwater lake in British Columbia, Canada, is riddled with reeflike structures called microbialites that form from microbes and minerals interacting over thousands of years.

"We are looking at this as a modern analog to help interpret early life on Earth," explains Greg Slater, an oceanographer from McMaster University who is part of the Pavilion Lake Research Project (http://www.pavilionlake.com/). "And fundamentally understating early life on Earth and looking for life on Mars is a similar type of problem."

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