New evidence showing Mars was once Earth-like with oxygen in its atmosphere and a vast ocean is leading some scientists to surmise if what they're viewing on Mars is what the Earth might look like in the future were our climate to go amuck.

 The discovery by NASA's robot Curiosity rover of manganese oxide on the arid and wind-swept Martian surface suggests the Red Planet was once much more Earth-like. Manganese oxide only forms in oxygen-rich and wet conditions on Earth.  It's found only in rock layers younger than the first photosynthetic organisms, which formed some 3.4 billion years ago.

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A recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggest liquid water and an oxygen-rich atmosphere played a role in the formation of these manganese oxide deposits early in Mars' history.

The Martian manganese oxide was discovered by Curiosity after it drilled beneath the Martian surface.  On Earth, manganese oxide layers are found in subterranean deposits left by groundwater and were later exposed as the rock around it eroded.

Scientists said manganese deposits are always going to be the result of dissolved igneous rocks in water. They posit the manganese on Mars was dissolved in water that interacted with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. The resulting substance was then deposited as manganese oxide.

"It's sort of mysterious. But it's a very strong indicator of two things: liquid water, lots of it, and a strong oxidant somewhere," said Nina Lanza, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who co-authored the study.

 "We know that doesn't happen on Mars today, so that opens up the question of, was there actually more oxygen in the atmosphere in Mars' past?"

"We don't know how that could have been true," she mused. "But these deposits are suggesting that it could have been."

The claim Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere remains controversial because there's no evidence as to what could have created this. On the young Earth billions of years ago, atmospheric oxygen was created by organisms known as cyanobacteria or blue-green algae that released oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis.

Lanza, however, claims Mars' oxygen might have been released from ancient and dried-up oceans. She believes that as Mars' atmosphere became thinner, the increased solar radiation might have broken apart water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, its constituent elements. Exactly why Mars lost its atmosphere is still a mystery, however.

TagsMars, Curiosity Rover, manganese oxide, water