Story by News Editor Ellie Youngs

On April 1st, 2023, NASA’s Curiosity rover stumbled upon a notably weird-looking formation of rocks. These rock formations possess rows of fairly equally spaced “spikes”. Some say that these rocks appear to be fossilized spines, and others have gone a step further and classified these rocks as dragon bones. 

These spikes were discussed in a post on a Facebook group page titled: Mars Rovers: Mosaics, Panoramas and Updates. The images captured by the Curiosity rover were also posted on Twitter and Reddit which have since generated some very interesting and enthusiastic discussions. The Curiosity Science Team has not commented on how exactly these spikes formed, however, that has not stopped people from speculating about this matter. As of right now, while there are some who encourage this discussion to stay on track of classifying these rocks as dragon bones, there has been a general consensus that these spikes formed as a result of wind erosion. 

“In 20 years of studying Mars, that’s the most bizarre rock I have ever seen,” said Nathalie Cabrol, prominent Astrobiologist and TED speaker. Many people have taken to twitter to continue the discussion on these rocks, and have compared them to a lot of the imagery seen in the film Dune.

While it is likely that the spikes on these rocks stem from erosion, it still highlights the fact that there is still an abundance of information that we still don’t know, and things we have not yet discovered. Curiosity’s main mission is still to collect data and determine if our neighboring planet has been, or will ever be capable of habitating any form of life.